Comment by JohnFen
2 years ago
> I've worked with engineers who studiously avoid configuring any sort of quality of life improvements for their shell, editor, etc.
This is me. It's really easy to explain my mindset here, though. If I get used to a nonstandard tool or tool configuration, then it causes real productivity issues when I'm using a system that lacks that tool or the ability to customize.
This is not a rare edge case for me at all. I constantly work on a half dozen very different platforms. Having each platform work as much like the others as possible is a quality of life improvement, and improves the efficiency and quality of my work.
But isn't that why we have config files that you can easily copy to a new system?
But I guess you have to look at how much time you'll gain from your copying your personal config, vs the overhead of copying your personal config itself. If you often switch to a new system where you would have to copy the config file, but if you only really edit 2/3 files on that system for which a personal config won't have much benefit, then it is understandable. If I need to setup a new server for example, that doesn't need to be configured heavily, but just some installs and small config changes, and won't have to touch it anymore after that, then why would I spend time putting my personal editor config there? But if I have a personal computer that I use daily, and I edit a lot of code, it would benefit me greatly to optimize my editor for my use cases. And whenever I get a new PC or I get a PC from work for example, I can just copy my config and benefit from it.