Re: The Cult of Hard Mode

Earlier this week I read Joan’s The Cult of Hard Mode: Why Simplicity Offends Tech Elites, something I had skipped over until I read Jack’s Hard Mode and status (and follow-up Hard Mode and blogging).

Jack writes quick thoughts, fluttering between changing out entire tool sets for his various workflows. Joan writes extended thoughts, creating a pathway that explores the thought and relations.

I love both of their blogs: one an excited friend sharing their moments another a more quiet person, but one that when they speak, I know I should give a listen. Crucial to both is that I receive their thoughts on my terms.

Interviews as Opportunities

For the last few weeks I’ve been part of a team interviewing candidates Sight Reliability Engineers and/or DevOps positions. I have nominal experience with Kubernetes, but I’m gaining an understanding of the response to questions around Kubernetes.

Namely that there are responses that are a ritual invocation of a litany of phrases that will sequentially check off some bingo card. And there are responses that will skip over most of that and leave mental energy for follow-up questions.

The former, an explanation of the ad nauseam variety; the other an acknowledgment that its complex, with an implicit “what specifically would you like to know?” And the most flowing interviews are those that dive into specifics.

In other words, the candidates that can paint a picture of the problems they solved, not the tools they used, are far more interesting. They become a chance for bi-directional learning.

Can We Learn Something?

I think to an interview years ago, for a different role (Copyright Librarian for those keeping track). I don’t remember the specifics, but I remember leaving with a solid understanding of an Academia-endemic organizational problem, along with a straightforward strategy of addressing that problem.

Later, I would go on to build a software application that applied the strategy of addressing the problem. The result, a collaborative workflow application that had a data driven state machine, with optional and required activities which upon completion would expose different actions to advance state. It also enforced state based permissions.

The participants in this workflow were:

• Graduate students submitting their master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation.
• Professors, both research advisors and committee members; some of whom may not be at the organization but were on the committee that would approve the submission.
• The Graduate School administrator who would both nudge things along; helping people at their stage, and also themselves performing specific duties.
• An IT Department agent that would poll the data to understand the where things were at in regards to graduation and credentialing.
• A library unit who would catalog the research papers.
• An library agent who would ingest the cataloged papers into the institutional repository.

The machinery was complicated, but the tool was designed to be simple for each participant.

Earlier this week I wrote about Emacs: Take Two; and what might have nudged me to adopt Emacs 📖 earlier. A long-standing joke is that Emacs is a great operating system that needs a better text editor.

Denote

I appreciate the simplicity of Denote 📖 ’s naming scheme. The file to which I’m writing this blog post is named 20250612T081424--re-the-cult-of-hard-mode__blogPosts_emacs_responses.org=

20250612T081424 the identifier as well as date and time I created the file. --re-the-cult-of-hard-mode the title of the document I’m working on. With dashes separating words, and replacing most non-alphabetical characters with dashes. The leading double dash is a separating between identifier of title. __blogPosts_emacs_responses the tags of this document, each tag separated by an underscore. .org the file extension (e.g., indicating Org-Mode 📖 ).

This simple naming schema, which itself is configurable, brings a strategic consistency to filenames; one independent of Emacs and Org-Mode ; leaning on a lower level standard: POSIX.

The brilliance of Denote is in its facilitation of this simplicity, making it easy to follow and utilize a file naming convention. (Sidenote: I worked at a library, and it was maddening how inconsistent the department was in regards to naming and organizing their files. If you do one simple thing, prefix all of your files with YYYYMMDD (year, month day). The ability to sort (and search) on that alone is worth the discipline.) And from that convention allowing the emergence of tools.

Integration

Emacs , for me, simplifies the integration of different computering activities. Were Emacs a toy, it would be a jumbled of old Lego pieces (or an Erector Set or Lincoln Logs) and other apps would be things like Play Mobile.

In isolation, each application may be simpler, but the unifying computering simplifies the cognitive load of my interaction with computer tasks. Consistent keybindings, fully customizable, allow me to build a muscle memory that persists across computer tasks…so long as they happen in Emacs.

There is the allure of shaving the Emacs yak; that is fiddling with features and tweaks—which comes in the form of writing Lisp. Something I find myself doing on occasion. But even that fiddling is like practicing musical scales with my foundational computering environment.

The Bespoke Beast

As much as I love the idea of static websites, it’s hard to argue that they’re not the “hard mode” of blogging.

I fully agree with this statement. Yet, for me, blogging is an activity that springs from a myriad of my computering interactions:

• Personal journal
• Reading an article from my RSS 📖 feed
• Analyzing and gathering material for documentation at work
• Stringing together some code snippets
• Playing a solo role-playing game session

And the act of publishing is two fold:

• Transforming/projecting that writing into an acceptable file format (e.g., Markdown)
• Sending it forward into the world.

Yet the blog posts remain within the context of what and where I’ve written. Something that my Bespoke Beast allows. And for myself I value that cohesion. Which is not to say that I couldn’t maintain that cohesion using a blogging platform; but it would push the complexity elsewhere.

Hosted Services

I pay for a static host; agreeing that all I have is a file system that can serve up files. I have offloaded to the hosting company the complexity of keeping up-to-date a web server (Apache or Nginx). I pay them to keep that simple for me.

I can pay for them to manage more of my complexity, thus creating a localized and relative-to-me simplicity. I can invoke the wizard’s spell Transmute Cash to Simplicity. And do so often.

Simplicity as Honeypot

But that invocation means becoming beholden to the simplifier. Perhaps what I send to the simplifier becomes no longer available in the form I sent it. Perhaps the receiver operates with an agenda that remains opaque to me; and perhaps run contrary. And maybe they themselves simplify through spell, by casting a complexity to another.

Collectively perhaps we’re navigating the web of inter-dependency hoping to push complexity elsewhere and to secure localized simplicity. We can see this in Vibe Coding, in which simplicity of developing something new stands on the mathematically mulched and composted remains of the shoulders of giants.

And my hope is not that this is read as an excoriation of Jack…who moves amongst different tool sets with an admirable fluidity, demonstrating an adaptive mindset and mental plasticity. Instead, to push a bit on potential false flags of simplicity.

As there are honeypots out there, offering simple experiences, that ensnare; seeking to feast on the weary or ease seekers.

So, I look to simplicity with caution, especially in regards to the breadth of computering. Something offered to me as a simple approach may be a tar pit. Perhaps luring me in. Or perhaps for which I am the bait.

Better Off

I often think of Eric Brende’s Better Off. In part as I’ve long lived in Amish country, and his story is one of Amish-mindsets in regards to technology adoption.

In short, in my area of Amish communities, many have flip phone, electric bikes, solar panels, and some electric machinery. And these are “allowed” their governing bishop. Because as a community they have assessed that this technology is a net positive. Making easier the business of woodworking and errand running.

My computering needs have greatly narrowed: Emacs is my go to for computering except when I need Javascript enabled web-browsing functionality. I do leverage supporting infrastructure for privacy: namely a Virtual Private Network (VPN 📖) and Open Snitch.

On Status

I wrote this to think through my principles of computer tool adoption. And as I was writing this the known-to-me complexity of our present state of computer use became clearer and grew. The world wide web (of technology) is complex and massive, with participants operating with a myriad of agenda.

While writing I didn’t reflect on the other aspect…the “Hard-Mode as status.” I know that I’ve been proud of the once hard-to-me things that I’ve done; sharing the results in part seeking the affirmation of others.

Listening and hoping to hear the whispers of “That Jeremy, he’s not afraid to tackle the hard things. And share what he’s done.” My ability to solve problems is what pays my bills, and these “hard things” are my signaling a capacity for problem-solving.

An admixture of hubris and attention-seeking. One that I’ve sought to temper by interrupting my problem solving preferences of idea generation and implementation to introduce up front clarification. To be able to name an observed problem and sit with the impact of that problem. Some problems dissolve under a bit of reflection.

Conclusion

I cannot express enough the joy of reading articles that are in conversation. Also in having a space in which to respond—thinking aloud—and thus enjoin the conversation.

To think and write not in interruption but as birdsong in the forest that is this world.