TL;DR -- but you asked...
Well, I was being purposefully provocative, of course.
When serious, I
advocate agnosticism. Use everything as often as you
can.
For me, it's less about diversity and more about core
skills. In my
experience (which is admittedly peculiar), the primary
skill is the
ability to try something out, figure out the basic use
cases, then move
on to the next tool. If your purpose is to get
something done, then use
the first tool you try/learn that actually works. Do the
job; move on.
If, however, your purpose is to understand, then use as
many tools as
you can, taken to the extent of some predefined test.
RE: platforms. It seems to me platforms are primarily a
way to avoid
learning, especially the more closed they are. Ease of
use is the bogey
man. It's the scapegoat upon which all platform
closures hang their
debt to society. This is why I cringe when I hear
things like "They
[Apple's devices] are also the easiest to learn to use
and the most
durable." This is antithetic to what I would teach a
child. If you
always/only use the easiest tools to use, then you're
only hurting
yourself. And you're setting yourself up to be
exploited by nefarious
agents.
Sure, it's OK to (mostly) use easy to use tools... but
only AFTER you've
become at least adequate at using the other tools in the
same domain.
(In fact, anyone who claims something like OS X is the
easiest or most
intuitive OS is just ASKING to be grilled about, say,
the difference
between Gnome 3 and Unity. And if they show _any_ hint
that they know
those aren't operating systems, then we get to grill
them on Plan 9 or
the Hurd ... or maybe VMS if I'm feeling generous.) My
point being that
ubiquity = ignorance.
If I were to try to write it down, it would read more
like a book for
kindergarten. Pay attention. Poke everything that
looks like it'll do
something when you poke it. Don't be afraid to break
it. Actually, try
to break it. You learn more about a thing by learning
what breaks it
than by doing what it's supposed to do. ("Bending" is
the real
cognitive target, of course.
http://www.moogfest.com/circuit-bending)
You learn even more if you try to fix it after you broke
it.
Anyway, my main point is that if you want to "survive"
the next "mass
extinction" event, learn the _domains_ and their use
cases. The
devices/tools that implement the use cases are
interchangeable and
largely irrelevant.
On 02/13/2014 11:49 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
Good points. But diversity? Do
you buy into that?
I certainly use services outside
of Google. Twitter mainly (have but don't
use Facebook) but many forums
which are not Google Groups.
I try to use cross platform apps
where possible. Sublime, for example, as
a text editor. Chrome/Firefox.
Terminal w/ standard CLI. Dropbox
(mac/windows/linux) for files.
iOS apps that are cross platform for the
most part, although my
cant-live-without-it Italian dictionary is iOS only
and they tell me that it's the
best choice for their market. Possibly iOS
folks are more willing to pay?
They seemed sincere.
The article was about survival
in a limited extent: how to deal with being
jerked around by the demise of a
popular service or platform.
How do you deal with it? Could
you teach a non-techie to follow your lead?
Would write down a simpler set
of rules that are easy to follow?
--
⇒⇐ glen
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