The crude nature of ASCII art is a feature, not a bug. I’m drawing ASCII art diagrams, just boxes and arrows drawn in plain text. I’m making a bunch of diagrams for a new project, and the best tool for the job would probably be Adobe Illustrator because professionals routinely use it to make high-quality vector art. That’s kind of what I was getting at in my recent post From shell to system. There’s something to be said for having crude tools that are convenient for small tasks, and sophisticated tools that are appropriate for big tasks, but not investing much in the middle. The advice above was given in the context of tools you’d find in a hardware store, but I’ve been thinking about it in the context of software tools. And you won’t waste money by buying a sequence of incrementally better tools until you finally buy a good one. But you won’t waste money buying expensive tools that you rarely use. If you follow this strategy, you’ll sometimes waste a little money by buying a cheap tool before buying a good one. (Update: Thanks to Jordi for reminding me in the comments that this comes from Kevin Kelly.) If it’s inadequate, or breaks, or you use it a lot, then buy the best one you can afford. I don’t recall where I read this, but someone recommended that if you need a tool, buy the cheapest one you can find.
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