The software I use most is not the software with the most features. It is the software I can hold in my head: a text editor, a notes file, a small script, a page that loads instantly.
There is a particular pleasure in a tool that does one thing and then gets out of the way.
The case for small
- You can understand the whole thing.
- You can change the part you dislike.
- You can outlive its maintainer.
- You can explain it to someone else in a sentence.
Large tools are not bad. They are just harder to remember, and memory is what makes a tool feel like an extension of your hands.
Personal software
The web used to be full of small personal tools: guestbooks, link pages, counters, tiny generators. Many of them were ugly and some of them were broken, but they had a quality that is rare now: they felt like someone's room.
A site like this one is among the last places on the web where that quality is still normal. It is not a platform; it is a place.
Make the tool small enough to understand, and personal enough to want to keep.
What I keep
- A plain text file for links I want to revisit.
- A folder of screenshots with names that only I understand.
- This site, which is a tool for thinking in public.
- A short list of scripts that do one thing each.
None of this is a system. It is a habit, maintained by hand. That seems to be enough.