Unnecessary Tribalism

Probably an outdated example since 95% of professional software devs nowadays just use VSCode/Cursor or IntelliJ if they write Java. I'm too young to have any memory of when these editors were popular and people were having genuine flame overs over them. But nonetheless, I think this will make my point.

Vim vs. Emacs? No, Vim and Emacs. Both Vim and Emacs are awesome, extremely hackable editors that I think appeal to the same type of programmer or sysadmin, and both are worth exploring. I love both of them. Currently, I mainly use Vim/Neovim for programming and Emacs more as a word processor (I'm writing this post in Emacs right now!).

If you want to be able to hack on your editor (and it's ok if you don't) and want to learn something new I think both are worth delving into. Both have their own unique set of advantages and disadvantages, and you'll learn which you prefer by trying to hack both, or maybe you'll just use both but for different purposes.

Flame wars are dumb. Both are awesome.

Linux and BSD. Free (as in freedom) Unix is awesome. I am truly grateful for the existence and my discovery of free Unix-like operating systems like Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD. My first introduction to Debian GNU/Linux opened up a brand new world of computing for me and empowered me as a computer user like I had never been before. I will always have fond memories of installing Debian for the first time on the used ThinkPad T580 I bought which had just arrived in the mail.

So I get really annoyed when I see people fighting over distros or BSD people trying act like they're better than Linux people or vice-versa. I think free Unix is a beautiful thing and the exploration of all its many variants should be encouraged and promoted. I started off with Linux but as of last year I have been exploring both FreeBSD and OpenBSD a lot. My router is running OpenBSD, this website is currently hosted on OpenBSD, and I've been experimenting with running FreeBSD servers at home. Not because I'm trying to "switch" from Linux or think I am better now for using BSD, but because free Unix is awesome and I am deeply curious and want to learn about all its variants. Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD are all great for different use cases.

Once again, flame wars are dumb. Both are awesome.

Again probably an outdated example, but I've been doing a lot of reading and research on the history of extreme metal (primarily Death and Black), and it's always funny to me to read about rivalries that used to exist between these different genres and subgenres of music. I find extreme music of all varieties fascainating, and have a deep appreciation and love for many kinds of extreme metal and hardcore punk. The musicians themselves had influences across genre boundaries, and there are tons of fusion genres like Crossover Thrash, Grindcore, Metalcore, War metal, and etc. So not sure why the fans themselves felt the need to fight each other.

Flame wars are DUMB.

I don't really know if people fight about this anymore but just to further drive home my point. Both are awesome.

Flame wars 👎.

I am sure you can think of examples from whatever you're into.

I tend to feel this way about most of the things I'm into when there are different subcategories of that thing; I try to find the merit in every option and usually find each category has their own set of trade-offs. Or maybe you think I'm stupid and X thing is obviously way better than Y thing. 🤷‍♂️