My Computing Rules 2013
Convention over configuration
Sure, you can use zsh and enjoy all the little nifty features but you could also just get used to the defaults of bash and be sure that wherever you login, you already know the environment. You can customize your tiling window manager until it looks like the Matrix just coredumped, but if you get accustomed to XFCE’s defaults, you can get to work minutes after installation. Customization leads to fiddling.
For example, after using a highly customized awesome for several years, I switched to using Debian and switched to KDE. I can get a new computer up and running in less than half an hour and without any prior configuration, all my machines work and “feel” the same way. YMMV. I’m not a deskmodder, I’m an admin. Nevertheless, I like to have my complete set of software and I have a Makefile for that.
Use existing technologies
duply for example is a complete backup solution built on top of rsync, gpg, tar and gzip. All of those programs have been around for years. Use existing building blocks to reach higher while profiting from the proven stability of those blocks.
Open source because it’s transparent
Someone more intelligent than me once said that you can learn a lot about a thing when you watch it fall apart. When a software solution is failing (and it will), I want to be able to look inside and find out why. Apart from social aspects of the open source movement, technical transparency is my selling point when it comes to chosing platforms or products.
Keep it simple
Bash scripts, correct use of version control and the occasional Makefile can solve more problems than you’d expect. Make it complex when it has to, not a second earlier.
Encrypt ALL the data
I use full disk encryption on all my devices. Do you know the sore feeling when your device gets stolen/lost and you wish you could at least delete the photos on it? I don’t.
Command line over GUI
Neal Stephenson’s In the Beginning, was the Command Line was a real eye opener for me in that it provided a reasonable theory of CLI vs GUI, “oral history” vs product (Stephenson). Thomas Scoville’s The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature complemented this thought for me:
Suddenly the overrepresentation of polyglots, liberal-arts types, and voracious readers in the UNIX community didn’t seem so mysterious, and pointed the way to a deeper issue: in a world increasingly dominated by image culture (TV, movies, .jpg files), UNIX remains rooted in the culture of the word.