We were a long-time team. Well calibrated on each other. Fuzzy thinking was called out on a regular basis.

Are you saying they called you out for your fuzzy thinking, and changed the topic of conversation to be more welcoming to your outsider perspective? You have sharp and kind coworkers.

You are needlessly offensive.

Tools are rarely a problem. The person using the tool is more often the problem.

This is the equivalent of someone wondering if they should the latest MacBook or the latest Surface to do some very basic sysadmin.

It doesn't matter!

Said otherwise, with total result as the sum of contributing factors like tools_factor + skill_factor + luck_factor + …, the partial derivative of tool is not significant.

For a lot of people speculative chatting about the tools is the point, more than taking pictures per se.

That seems correct. I have never understood the propose of such speculative chatting.

Maybe the conversion was not about achieving or improving a task, but idle talk for social purposes?

> What's the purpose of taking pictures and fixating on the past?

Personally, I find no value in that, but I respect differences of tastes.