This morning I read an article by Dennis Felsing about his impressive/intimidating Linux desktop setup. He uses a lot of tools that are not the easiest way to get things done immediately but are long-term productivity investments.
Remembrance of syntax past
Felsing apparently is able to remember the syntax of scores of tools and programming languages. I cannot. Part of the reason is practice. I cannot remember the syntax of any software I don’t use regularly. It’s tempting to say that’s the end of the story: use it or lose it. Everybody has their set of things they use regularly and remember.
But I don’t think that’s all. I remember bits of math that I haven’t used in 30 years. Math fits in my head and sticks. Presumably software syntax sticks in the heads of people who use a lot of software tools.
There is some software syntax I can remember, however, and that’s software closely related to math. As I commented here, it was easy to come back to Mathematica and LaTeX after not using them for a few years.
Imprinting
Imprinting has something to do with this too: it’s easier to remember what we learn when we’re young. Felsing says he started using Linux in 2006, and his site says he graduated college in 2012, so presumably he was a high school or college student when he learned Linux.
When I was a student, my software world consisted primarily of Unix, Emacs, LaTeX, and Mathematica. These are all tools that I quit using for a few years, later came back to, and use today. I probably remember LaTeX and Mathematica syntax in part because I used it when I was a student. (I also think Mathematica in particular has an internal consistency that makes its syntax easier to remember.)
Picking your memory battles
I see the value in Felsing’s choice of tools. For example, the xmonad window manager. I’ve tried it, and I could imagine that it would make you more productive if you mastered it. But I don’t see myself mastering it.
I’ve learned a few tools with lots of arbitrary syntax, e.g. Emacs. But since I don’t have a prodigious memory for such things, I have to limit the number of tools I try to keep loaded in memory. Other things I load as needed, such as a language a client wants me to use that I haven’t used in a while.
Revisiting a piece of math doesn’t feel to me like revisiting a programming language. Brushing up on something from differential equations, for example, feels like pulling a book off a mental shelf. Brushing up on C# feels like driving to a storage unit, bringing back an old couch, and struggling to cram it in the door.