§ Unsaved files

I’m not sure why unsaved files even exist.

Is there ever a situation in which you want a file to be not saved?

For me, there isn’t.

That is why every piece of editor I own has its autosave feature turned on: Autosave in Editors

§ No version history

Oh, did something in your config break?

Oh, what about the draft you’ve shown me last time?

Oh, what about …?

I think you got the point.

It doesn’t make any sense that we’re limited to the current state the files we’re working on are in. We should be able seamlessly jump through the history of every file there is.

§ No backups

§ No search through history

§ Works on my machine (but not others)

Computers are magic pieces a determinism. When there aren’t any cosmic rays flipping bits (citation needed), everything we do could, in theory, work deterministically (provided we throw enough Math at it).

We have, however, introduced any number of ‘features’ that make this unnecessarily hard. (Think dynamic libraries ‘n’ stuff).

Then, we’ve introduced another layer of tools that can in principle tackle most of these problems (Docker & containers) while introducing their own complexity.

But at least we got them.

§ Tools with Different States on Different Machines

§ Tool Versioning problems

§ Code Reloading by Hand

§ Conclusion

Can you spot the pattern?

• All of these represent an additional piece of mental workload or actual work introduced.
• Most, if not all of them can be resolved by Automation.
• And all of them are—unsurprisingly—related to Simplicity.