They didn't think of it "themselves," but they did choose to do it.

Very cool! I built a version of this [1], but balked at trying to sell it. This is the third iteration of this idea I've seen so far. Your reply popup is a smart feature and a nice touch! Love it. I love the privacy focus and BYOK, as well.

Congrats on the launch!

Really cool to see graph interfaces for AI having their moment. :)

[1] https://coloring.thinkout.app/

Wow, this is really cool! Thanks for sharing!

Thanks! Are you able to figure it out?

Feel free to message me if you're willing to chat about it. Would love to know if it's actually useful for you.

joshua@huttj.com

Anyone who says “it’s easy” might be having an easy go of it, or they might lack the self-awareness to realize the amount of energy and cortisol they are burning through when they accomplish the task.

“Easy” things today can mysteriously cause burnout tomorrow. It’s easy to mistake the brain chemicals that lubricate effort for lack of friction.

Also, memorizing mental modals has a sort of path dependence to it. Once you have one in your brain, it’s hard to replace, even if it sucks.

You expressed this this much more concisely that I did.

I really enjoyed how the post was laid out —- the structure caught and kept my attention and made the arguments easy to follow.

Unfortunately, I’m not convinced. The author makes a good case for experimentation, but not for “tool maximization.”

I think there is a case to me made for “find tools that do your work for you” —- that’s “buy, don’t build” —- but that case was not made here.

Further, I think that it’s easy to actually overwhelm yourself with too many tools, at which point you’ve exhausted your interest and willingness to learn them. I have several “code time” extensions, which I installed under this exact line of thinking. I still haven’t made the evaluation of which one I prefer. I picked one by default and kept the others “just in case.” And I have plenty of other extensions that I plan to someday evaluate.

I think the best tool use and evaluation comes from a sense of immediate necessity, just like the best learning comes through immediate practice and application.

Everything else is just imagination, which can be hard to sustain and substantiate.

> I really enjoyed how the post was laid out —- the structure caught and kept my attention and made the arguments easy to follow.

Thank you.

> Further, I think that it's easy to actually overwhelm yourself with too many tools, at which point you've exhausted your interest and willingness to learn them.

I think most of the counterarguments in the comments to this post will have a similar idea to this. My thought is that this phenomenon occurs because of a lack of tool intelligence in handling tools. What those comments show is that more content is needed on how to survive among numerous tools and how to easily filter tools. Some things are hard to use alone without something else, and this seems to be the case.

> I think the best tool use and evaluation comes from a sense of immediate necessity

You assume that people can know what tools they need. Considering my observations, that doesn't match reality. That doesn't mean a dancer has to go through all the Excel documents they don't even use, but it's easy to narrow down the candidates for what might be relevant to you.

> this phenomenon occurs because of a lack of tool intelligence in handling tools. What those comments show is that more content is needed on how to survive among numerous tools and how to easily filter tools.

That's fair. Using tools is a skill. We all have different levels of, uh, enthusiasm for exploring and finding them. I just lack the drive to find the perfect tool, similar to how I lost the drive to endlessly customize my phone.

It just feels like a waste of time relative to the other ways I would prefer to spend my time. You could argue that makes me an inferior developer, and I would gladly concede.

What I scrimp on "craftmanship skill points" I gladly put into "empathy and philosophy" ones. Not that they're mutually exclusive, but I got burnt out on trying to solve the wrong problem too many times that I overtrained on connecting with people and trying to ask "are we solving the right problem?"

I guess I could apply that skill to "can I find better tools or use the tools I have better," but that just doesn't feel like a limiting factor, to me.

> You assume that people can know what tools they need.

Not what I was trying to communicate. I was conveying the opposite — you can't know what you need until you're facing a real problem in a real domain, not an imagined one or a simulated environment. So, rather than try to find the best tools for "all time," let the immediate sticking point drive the process of finding and learning tools, evaluated against what solves the problem at hand (with the context of everything you know up until that point, of course).

Thank you sincerely for your thoughtful comment. Here are some of my points:

> I lost the drive to endlessly customize my phone.

The way to avoid that is to 'start at the maximum and gradually decrease'. I don't want to endlessly fiddle with everything while not missing out on anything.

> I gladly put into "empathy and philosophy" ones.

Actually, my anticipated answer is that I would use Tool Intelligence to do this well. But as soon as I say that, people will come at me cursing. I'm trying to find something to say in response to that.

> you can't know what you need until you're facing a real problem in a real domain

My point is, many people can't figure out what tools are useful to them even when they have a real problem in front of their eyes.

You know, I think we’ve reached the point in the divide where it would be more instructive for me to see more examples of how you work, or vice-versa than it would to continue like this.

I get the sense that we are expressing preferences, at this point. I’m sure it would be interesting to watch you do what you do. :)

Thank you for saying that. And be warned: the below part of this comment is self-promotion, so don't read it if you don't want to.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

I have a post[1] about how I use my mouse. From that, you can get a sense of how I use tools. I think it will be interesting because while there are many articles about how to use keyboards, I couldn't find articles about mice. I'll keep posting interesting writings, so I'd be happy if you subscribe. I think when I submit a post introducing my room to HN, they will be at a loss for words.

[1]: https://www.sungho.blog/p/maximizing-mouse-not-keyboard-pote...

My thoughts on this are to slow down and document and explore that knowledge and information. If it is really valuable, the "loss" in efficiency from slowing down will be offset by the gain in skill/utility from really grokking the stuff.

If it's not...then there's really nothing "left" on the table — if ever turns out to be valuable, you'll probably come across it again, when needed.

I constantly get a similar feeling. I'm speeding around from task to task, just grasping enough to get the current task done so I can get to the next one and the next one...

And somehow this is value-creating? Apparently it is, but it seems almost accidental, at that rate.

I'd rather slow down and appreciate the value as it moves through me, into whatever I'm doing.

I usually get more from the process, at the same time.

It's like...if "less is more," then "more is less."

Reminds me of a floating point number. The bigger or smaller they get, the less accurate they become.

If you're chunking on a ton of data and tasks, you're getting less out of it. At a certain point, none of it even seems to enter your brain at all.

Basically, this is what college should be teaching you - how to research. What good does are useless facts? I don't want to walk around cluttered with a dictionary - I want to know where to look in that dictionary. Obviously in the sciences there are facts that you should know, but even with math, its more about how to derive the formula, than actually memorizing it. I mean, their called "Research Papers" right?

Totally agree. I remember the phrase “learning how to think” being thrown around.

I also remember not being explicitly taught that.

It sort of seems like trying to find enlightenment by chopping wood and carrying water at a monastery.

If critical thinking is something that spontaneously emerges in a learning environment, maybe we shouldn’t sell it as a benefit. “Some students experience deep insight into the nature of the mind. Results not typical.”

I can see your point, but I think it's worthwhile to understand the full context, even if it's irrelevant on the surface.

I wasn't familiar with von Braun before reading this thread, and I appreciate the extra info. Complex figure. Maybe even a really bad guy. But, also interesting that his work was useful in getting us to the moon.

Maybe we can all appreciate that dichotomy.

Even more interesting to note, is without your initial pushback, I wouldn't have read more detail about him, so I owe your resistance to actually exploring this facet of the man's alleged history to getting me to actually read a bit about it.

That's one way to do it!

Most problems are hard to "solve" because we entertain the delusion of solutions that don't exist — solutions which tie everything together with a nice bow and require no discomfort or negative emotions of any kind.

Alex Hormozi says "the life you want is on the other side of a few hard conversations."

I would channel that to say, "the solution you're looking for is on the other side of a few uncomfortable feelings."

And usually, it's just the fear of the feelings, not the feelings themselves.