Published on November 10, 2025 8:11 AM GMT
I have a writing tip! This is especially about writing code but it mostly generalizes to prose. You know how Vim is a wildly powerful editor with an elegant system of composable primitives and Turing-complete macros? Here’s an argument that you don’t actually want that…
Sometimes when coding you’ll find yourself doing some mindless repetitive task like re-indenting a block of code line by line. For that particular example maybe it’s already in your muscle memory to do something more efficient. But suppose it’s something slightly more complicated. In a powerful enough editor there will be a macro you can create on the fly or clever composition of text-manipulation primitives and if you’re good enough at this you’ll look like a w…
Published on November 10, 2025 8:11 AM GMT
I have a writing tip! This is especially about writing code but it mostly generalizes to prose. You know how Vim is a wildly powerful editor with an elegant system of composable primitives and Turing-complete macros? Here’s an argument that you don’t actually want that…
Sometimes when coding you’ll find yourself doing some mindless repetitive task like re-indenting a block of code line by line. For that particular example maybe it’s already in your muscle memory to do something more efficient. But suppose it’s something slightly more complicated. In a powerful enough editor there will be a macro you can create on the fly or clever composition of text-manipulation primitives and if you’re good enough at this you’ll look like a wizard — code rearranging itself in whooshes like you’re Neo in The Matrix.
But I claim that, if it’s not already muscle memory, there’s a big hidden cost to saving yourself the visible cost of manually doing those edits line by line. Namely, you’re redirecting the programming (or writing) part of your brain from the code (or words) you’re working on to the meta problem of maximizing your editing efficiency. That is a distraction from the task at hand!
When you just do the mindless manual edits, your brain stays engaged with the actual thing you’re editing. The wasted time isn’t really wasted. You’re mulling and chewing on the text as you make those mindless edits.
“But it’s an investment!” I hear you counterarguing. If you turn that wizardry into muscle memory you have the best of both worlds. Maybe! I’m not saying always edit things in the most tedious way possible. Just at least mind the tradeoffs. Breaking your flow to fuss with your tools and solve meta-problems is costlier than it seems; and mindless, repetitive editing isn’t as wasteful as it seems. Because your brain is engaged with the object-level problems of what you’re composing while you’re doing it.
PS: Hello from Inkhaven! As I’ve been talking about on both of my other blogs — Beeminder and AGI Friday — I’m here for two weeks as a Contributing Writer, helping the participants with their writing (and especially helping them set up automated word count trackers and commitment devices based thereupon). I’m not technically myself on the hook to publish something every day but I’m a little jealous of the participants. So I’m taking a stab at it. I’ve collected dozens of tips and my plan is to pick one each day and see if it turns into 500 words. This one didn’t, but with this postscript it’s close!
(Also it’s now a few minutes after midnight so I have failed the spirit of Inkhaven on my first full day here. Except that saying so is juuuust barely eking me over the 500 word threshold. So I guess if we don’t quibble about the midnight deadline, this one maybe counts after all? It really feels like a stretch to get there by counting this tedious self-reference though. Alas.)
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