Memorable techniques
My favorite part of this post by Ian Miellis the introduction. The article is about shell commands, but the introduction brings up a more general point.
... there are thousands of reusable patterns I've picked up ... Unfortunately, I've forgotten about 95% of them. ... The point is to reflect on what actually stuck, so that others may save time by spending their time learning what is more likely to stick.
Why aren't there more posts about techniques that stick? I see three reasons address in this article.
Bias against memorabilityTechniques that make popular blog posts do not necessarily make useful long term memories. Novelty and brevity are more helpful than memorability if you want to make the top of Hacker News.
There's a bias against memorability because it is a kind of negative property and hard to notice. You can notice that something is hard to remember more easily than you can notice that it is easy to remember. For example, Miellis quotes someone saying on Twitter that he can never remember how to use xargs. It's unlikely anyone will send out a tweet about how easy it is, say, to remember how to use the cd command.
Fault findingAnother disincentive to writing about memorable techniques is inevitable criticism. Miellis is apparently well aware of this and preemptively addresses those who will gleefully find fault.
I'm acutely aware that for most of these tips there are better/faster/more elegant ways to achieve the same thing, but that's not the point here.
Memorability is a fuzzy concept, and it's easy to one-up a recommended approach on more objective criteria such as brevity or efficiency. I can do the same task in two lest keystrokes. Take that!"
SubjectivityMemorability is personal. As Miellis put it,
... your mileage may vary depending on your tastes and what you most commonly use the shell for.
Going back to the fault-finding angle, you almost guarantee contradiction if you say something is or is not memorable.
This doesn't mean that memorability is hopeless. A writer can say in essence Here's what I find memorable. Try it. Maybe you'll find it memorable too. If not, I hope you find something that works for you." A reader can say I actually find the solution you criticize easier to remember than the solution you propose, but I'm glad you brought it to my attention. Thanks."
Ultimately you have to decide what works for you. One takeaway from Miellis's article may be to think more consciously about what you're likely to remember. Having to look things up is a major disruption to flow, and so a better" solution may not be better in terms of overall productivity. A kludge you can cobble together without much thought is often more productive than an elegant solution that interrupts your work with research.
Related postsThe post Memorable techniques first appeared on John D. Cook.