Not surprising that George RR Martin writes his Song of Ice & Fire books on a disconnected DOS machine. With that amount of plot lines, character deaths and surprises he can't afford distractions. It does raise another question though, how many assumptions does your computer make about what you do?
I watched the clip of George RR Martin on Conan admitting that he used an old DOS PC that isn't connected to the internet to write his series of books, A Song of Ice & Fire. Martin and Conan have a laugh about it on the clip, but Martin makes a good point about the computers of today. They do so much for you, but are they doing too much?
When I was a software developer working with Microsoft's .NET framework, I wrote all of my applications in a programming environment that did some of the work for you. It's called a integrated development environment or IDE for short. What sets an IDE apart from a regular text editor like Sublime Text or Vim, is that the IDE is more than just a text editor. It's an environment tailored towards a specific set of languages or frameworks. It has features and shortcuts built-in that are there to help you write software applications.
One of the reasons that Microsoft's Visual Studio environment is used by so many developers working with Microsoft's .NET framework is that it does some of the work for you. When you create a file for your project, it will include a template of a class or module with boilerplate code included, or if you're building a website it will include a basic layout on a new HTML file. It does lots of little things like this because it's been built to assist the programmer as much as it can.
Having worked with IDE's like Visual Studio for a number of years it's easy to the see benefits in the amount of code you can write in a typical work day. I wasn't happy with this though. Too many of the small decisions were being taken out of my hands and assumptions were made by Visual Studio that I would need everything that it generated for me. Over time I gradullay tailored the templates and snippets that Visual Studio included by default so that Visual Studio wasn't making as many big assumptions about what I need. Not everyone does this though.
This is what Martin makes a point of when he is writing. He doesn't want an opinionated machine that makes suggestions for him, he wants a machine that just does as it's told. In this case if he makes a spelling mistake it won't suggest the right spelling to him, if he writes a new word that the computer can't find in a dictionary it won't suggest an alternative word that it thinks the writer was supposed to type. It takes the words that Martin types in and that's it. That's probably all that a lot of writers want. A chance to write without distractions and suggestions and other changes that the computer thinks we need.
I use a text editor with a few plugins that automate work for me as a programmer. As a rule I use packages and libraries that only make a minimal number of assumptions about what I need when I am writing code. Yes, I have snippets to create new classes, modules and methods, but they don't assume I need anything more than the declaration of the object in question. I want to make the decision about the structure of a new class or a new method when I'm writing my code. If the computer does it and it's wrong, I end up having to make a correction and then continue with work.
It's good to see that Martin is proof that the latest devices or apps are not what you need to make an idea a reality. Focusing on computer speed, productivity tools and other factors may not make you work any faster than if you had older equipment and tools. It's about using those tools correctly and removing distractions and barriers that make you productive. Every day I face my laptop and get notifications of new emails, app updates, test updates, and all manner of alerts telling me to shift my focus from what I am doing. I should turn these off or at least par them back to only the necessary alerts that I need to do my job.
Computers, tablets, phones and even washing machines, dish washers other home appliances are all made to make assumptions about what we want. These aren't always the right assumptions and we often find ourselves making daily micro adjustments to get the desired result. By ensuring that the devices and apps we use make minimal assumptions about what we do, it allows us to do things our way. And doing things our own way is better than adhering having to constantly fine tune the ways of others to get what we want.
