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Comment by jqm | Hacker News Reader

Good article.

Now I have an excuse for getting on HN from time to time while locked away in the solitary confinement of VIM.

See, this is why you should have been using emacs all along. Theological and ergonomic considerations aside, for your sanity's sake, GNU emacs comes with two IRC clients, a web browser, an email reader and a usenet reader to stave off isolation-induced hacker-madness. And in extremis, with no network connection, there's always M-x doctor.

Truly, RMS thought of everything, and then put it in emacs twice, just in case.

tmux will do just fine. My text editor should do text editing well, nothing more.

For a serious and meaningful article, your response is quite tasteless.

insistence on being "serious" and "meaningful" is something a lot of people - myself included - find to be isolating and can induce the same problems as actually being alone. if i'm not free to express myself in a lighthearted and playful manner, if everything is filtered through the emotionally sterile mask of 'professionalism', i feel lonely. i'd suggest GP's comment is in keeping with the spirit of the findings. humor draws us together.

There were a few times in the past year where I was working odd hours and not seeing many people outside of what I was crunching on. HN was a helpful reminder that there were still other people out there.

yes, exactly.

thank you.

Humor is essential for humans to cope with stress.

Of all the comments I've made, I can't figure out why this is the one that sits at -1. Interesting.

I can't figure it out either.

There appears to be a measure of anger in the world. It's sad really.

I disagree with you 100%.

Some of these symptoms might appear in people who are isolated and working remotely or people who spend long stretches of time locked away and working on projects. In fact, I'll go so far as to say I am sure less severe version of these symptoms appear.

I'm surprised you don't see the connection and can only assume you have not been in one of these situations or are not a programmer.

The extreme isolation described in this article bears little resemblance to "working on projects", so the connection seems spurious.

You seem to have missed the portion about "locked away".

The fact is that there is a connection... isolation.

And it may result in manifestation of less severe versions of the same symptoms.

If actually you've been locked away in the way the article describes and forced to program you should probably complain to HR

I think you're just making that up, and that it trivializes the real trauma the article is about.

Ok, if that's what you think.

Thanks for expressing your opinion. I'm sorry you feel the need to be hostile. And, I don't agree with you.

This is the comment you should have made originally. Your initial comment comes across as little more than an unsuccessful attempt at a funny one-liner. Here's what pg has to say[0] about those kinds of comments:

  "The most dangerous form of stupid comment is not the long but
   mistaken argument, but the dumb joke. [...] Whatever the cause,
   stupid comments tend to be short. And since it's hard to write a
   short comment that's distinguished for the amount of information it
   conveys, people try to distinguish them instead by being funny."

Or did you intend your initial comment to be serious? If so, perhaps you can explain how you believe that working in vim is tantamount to solitary confinement. Is someone forcing you to be alone while you use a text editor? In other words, are you being actively prevented from working alongside other people? Does using vim isolate you from other sensory input?

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html

Stupid comments might tend to be short.

But all short comments are not stupid. Sometimes it is possible to say much with humor in very few words.

Thank you for providing a guys opinion. But I don't happen to be religious.

  > Sometimes it is possible to say much with humor in very few words.

I completely agree with that, though I disagree that you said much in your original comment (or that it was funny) which is why I think that your subsequent comment explaining what you meant would have been better to start with. Your original comment mentioned nothing about working remotely in isolation or less severe version of the symptoms, and "the solitary confinement of VIM" is a pretty absurd statement to make unless you explain what you mean.

It's been interesting to watch the votes on the original comment over the past couple of hours.

It has received no less than 10 votes with a fairly even split and a slight favor towards the positive. Some people apparently feel exactly what I'm talking about. Some don't.

I think maybe we are seeing breakdown of people who have put in serious alone time with an editor VS those who have not. I could be wrong about this. But I don't feel the need to explain. You understand or you don't.

I'm sorry if the comment caused you consternation. Please be assured this was not my intention.

No consternation felt here; my intent is to encourage higher quality comments. Your follow-up comment was quality as it contained relevant details your initial comment lacked.

I respect your opinion and am sorry you didn't understand my initial comment.

Best.

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