[curtisblaine]

What is a good tool that's invisible? I'm genuinely curious. All tools I've used are either simple and heavily limited (so, not "invisible" because hard things are hard) or powerful but heavily specialized (so, not "invisible" because the learning curve is very evident). I feel the trade off is inescapable.

[tpoacher]

That's just it though isn't it. Good tools that are invisible to you won't easily come to mind because they tend to be, well, invisible.

It's not until you randomly end up on a system which doesn't have that tool that its usefulness becomes visible; and I mean really visible.

[dgellow]

A tilling window manager is a fantastic tool that is close to invisible.

Though I don’t agree with the author. Visibility isn’t what matters, if you get comfortable with a specialized tool like a CAD software, or a game engine studio like Unreal, it’s not invisible at all but your brain will stop focusing on all the noise on your screen and you become pretty focused and productive. I live emacs, but Rider is also a fantastic editor.

Though I would love for things like LLMs to be way more out of your way, more “invisible”, more tool like. I hate the current UX of having to tame a patronizing, annoying fake human just to get things done the way I want them to be done

[sota_pop]

A good tool is invisible such that it is highly opinionated and nails the 80, 90, 99% use cases in terms of making assumptions regarding logical defaults.

Restated, the tool understands the process and what a “good” result/outcome looks like. It correctly presumes relevant and important information (especially given the current stage of your full task), and can “fill the gaps” between start and finish.

A good tool can distinguish between what you wanted, what you thought you wanted, and what you “should have” wanted.

A good tool makes it easy to do the “right” thing and hard to do the “wrong” thing.

A good tool doesn’t function to be understood, but to not be misunderstood.

I have spent a lot of time sitting in this question, having spent years creating design and drafting automation tools for architects, designers, and engineers in the building-design industry.

[blanched]

I think this is really insightful. Every "good and invisible" tool I thought of fit neatly into one of those two categories. Examples:

Powerful and specialized: automatic transmission, display/monitors

Simple and limited: syntax highlighting, deterministic autocomplete

The closest ones imo that bridge the gap: ssh, google search

[dsmurrell]

The eye.

[curtisblaine]

Many definitions of tool explicitly exclude body organs to draw a line between innate mechanisms that are inestricably linked to the body and objects used to extend one's innate physical or mental influence on the environment. The eye is not a tool, according to these definitions, but eyeglasses are.