[_fat_santa]

I would say it’s incredible to see the quality and “durability” of Linux/Unix tools. The other day I wondered “how old is grep”, looked it up and realized that I use a piece of software that’s over 50 years old on a daily basis.

The fact that these tools have stood the extreme test of time is really something.

[ehecatl42]

Back in '94 I remember motherfsking some paper I was writing late at night in the computer lab. I think the wordprocessor was AmiPro, and it was giving me grief to the extent that I was at the point of violence.

Another person in the lab came over, invited me to his machine and showed me LaTeX in Emacs. We became friends (he a mathematician, I a zoologist). I bought beer; he brought 'computer wisdom'. Thirty-odd years later, those files are still perfectly reproducible. All of my kid's school reports from elementary onwards... LaTeX.

It's hard to overstress how important is longevity in a toolset.

Side rant on Emacs' keybinds: with orderless and vertico (and marginalia and whichkey) it is almost as fast for me to `M-x dir` as to `C-x d`, and in both cases I get a dired buffer. Aaand, `dired` is magic. History also tells me that it is older than Emacs.

\end{rant}