This is a great analogy. In high school and college, I believe I was a Windows and then Linux "car guy". One of the things I liked when I (mostly) switched to OSX from Linux was that I no longer had to spend any time fiddling with stuff. I used to find it fun, now it just feels like there's way too many interesting things to be learning about and doing to spend any time tweaking crap on my computer!
I feel there's two levels of the constant fiddler, one where their fiddling is fruitful, one where the fiddling is not. The difference, I feel, basically comes down to how much you document, test, and automate what you do.
If treated like science instead of voodoo, messing with your computer becomes one of those "interesting things to be learning."
That's how I used to feel, and then (documentation and automation or not) it totally lost its interest for me! Creating software is just so much more interesting than configuring somebody else's. YMMV.
Programming is very interesting and enjoyable, but it's also quite hard. The road from idea to implementation is often long and filled with obstacles. It's well worth it to spend some time "fiddling" to remove some of them. In truth, I personally am not very interested in tinkering with config files - it's boring and frustrating at times - but I still do it. I feel it's my duty as a professional as well as a pride as a craftsman to keep my tools sharp.
People who refuse to do this scare me a little. They got something somebody else told them works and they learned to live with it even if it has flaws. Now I have to wonder: how many refactors weren't done, how much technical debt piled up just because they did the same when writing code?
Interesting perspective! I think the analogy to refactoring is also apt. Keeping tools sharp is good, but (quickly, in my opinion) hits a point of diminishing returns. Refactoring is even better but also eventually hits that point (much less quickly).
> but (quickly, in my opinion) hits a point of diminishing returns.
That's certainly true - it depends on the tools you use and problems you use them to solve, but sooner or later you'll see your "sharpening" stop giving you any advantage. That's the moment you should just stop :) And maybe try other tools: but that's always a non-trivial time investment and should be done only after making sure there actually is something to be gained from the switch.
This is true in most other areas as well. For example, I'm collecting knives as a hobby. I had to learn how to care for them and sharpen them. It's incredible how sharp you can make a knife given proper tools - whetstones ans stropping - you can get an edge which is sharper than any scalpel or razor. It's also a complete waste of time to do so: it takes hours to make a knife that sharp and it takes one or two cuts to dull it. Granted, my "dulled" edge is probably still sharper than anything you ever saw ;) but in the end I get the same edge I'd get without those extra hours spent on polishing it. It then stays that way for quite a long time. It took me years to learn how much sharpening is "good enough". Now, for my primary pocket folding knife, I spend 15-30 minutes sharpening it per week and get an edge I can trust.
It's the same in programming. Both sharpening knives and tinkering with programming tools can be pleasant by itself. It takes practice to recognize that "good enough" is actually really ok and that anything more than that is a waste of time. Still, I can't imagine not sharpening my knives at all. Or giving them to someone else for sharpening. The very idea seems crazy to me.
Your story about the knives is interesting, because it sounds like all you really need is one (or maybe even zero - I'm not sure what you're doing with them) "good enough" knife, but you enjoy having a bunch and tinkering with them. That's great, and sounds pretty fun. My point in this thread has just been that at some point I realized all I really need is a simple development setup, and that I don't particularly enjoy tinkering with it.
