The Heat of the Campfire
Ishe Chinyoka
- 4 minutes readTable of Contents
Spend enough time around Unix and open-source communities and you will eventually find yourself sitting around a campfire.
Not a real one, of course, but one built from opinions, traditions, favourite tools, and decades-old debates that refuse to die. Around these digital fires, people passionately discuss editors, operating systems, shells, programming languages, container technologies, markup formats, and just about everything else that can be typed into a terminal.
The editor wars. vim versus Emacs. The distro wars. Arch versus Debian. The container wars. Docker versus Podman. The markup wars. Markdown versus AsciiDoc, Org Mode, reStructuredText, and many others.
To an outsider, these arguments can seem exhausting. Why can’t everyone simply use what works?
The answer is that these debates are often about much more than software.
Why We Gather Around the Fire
A favourite tool is rarely just a tool.
It represents hours, months, sometimes years of learning. It becomes part of our thinking. A skilled Vim user does not merely edit text differently from an Emacs user; they often think about editing differently. Someone deeply invested in Arch Linux has a different relationship with their operating system than someone who prefers Ubuntu or Fedora.
The same is true for markup languages.
Once you’ve internalised Markdown’s elegant simplicity, you naturally appreciate its readability and portability. An AsciiDoc enthusiast values expressive power and sophisticated publishing workflows. Org Mode users see documents as living systems rather than static files.
These preferences are not accidents. They grow out of experience.
And that is a good thing.
Mastery comes from commitment. Productivity comes from familiarity. We become efficient because we stop thinking about the tool and start thinking about the work.
The campfire gives us warmth because people care deeply about what they have learned.
The Value of Friendly Wars
Healthy disagreements have always been part of technical culture.
They force us to explain why we prefer a tool rather than merely saying that we do.
They expose us to alternatives we might never have considered.
They encourage software authors to improve their projects.
Many innovations have emerged because one community looked across the fire and thought, “That’s actually a clever idea.”
The Unix world has thrived precisely because people have experimented, disagreed, borrowed ideas, and improved upon one another’s work.
Today’s “winning” feature is often yesterday’s controversial experiment.
Without passionate communities, software would evolve much more slowly.
When the Fire Escapes
A campfire is wonderful when it remains inside its circle of stones.
Left unattended, however, it can burn an entire veld.
Technical communities are no different.
Sometimes people become defenders of a cause without really understanding why the cause existed in the first place. They inherit opinions rather than forming them through experience.
Instead of learning their own tools more deeply, they spend their energy criticising someone else’s.
The discussion shifts from productivity to identity.
“I use this editor.”
becomes
“My editor makes me better than you.”
That is where the fire becomes dangerous.
Technology should serve people, not divide them.
No one ever became a better writer by mocking another person’s text editor. No administrator managed servers more effectively by ridiculing someone else’s Linux distribution. No document became clearer because its author spent an afternoon arguing about markup languages on the Internet.
Real craftsmanship happens away from the battlefield.
A Textsmith’s Perspective
Here at The Textsmith, our loyalty is not to a particular editor, operating system, or distribution.
Our loyalty is to text.
We celebrate plain text because it lasts.
We celebrate markup because it gives structure without sacrificing readability.
We celebrate tools because they help us think, write, publish, and preserve knowledge.
Whether you write Markdown in Visual Studio Code on Windows, edit AsciiDoc inside Vim on Linux, compose Org Mode files in Emacs, or use another workflow entirely, you are welcome around this fire.
(For the record, the editor of this blog is thoroughly steeped in Linux—but that is a personal preference, not a membership requirement.)
What matters is not the badge on your laptop.
What matters is whether your tools help you create.
Keep the Fire Burning
Every camper enjoys a different fire.
Some burn hardwood.
Some prefer charcoal.
Some cook with gas.
The wise camper does not walk around extinguishing everyone else’s fire.
Instead, they exchange stories.
They borrow recipes.
They share techniques.
They learn.
The best technical communities have always worked this way. Beginners find mentors. Experts remain curious. Ideas travel from one campfire to another, improving everyone along the way.
That is the kind of community worth building.
So enjoy the debates. Defend your favourite editor if you must. Tell us why your markup language makes writing more enjoyable. Explain why your Linux distribution fits your workflow perfectly.
Just remember that the purpose of the campfire is to provide warmth—not to burn the veld.
If we can keep the fire where it belongs, there will always be room for another chair around it.