What other options are there? Genuinely curious about what else exists

I use beets and it works well for me: https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

I'll second this. beets is excellent.

I wanted to love beets as I prefer the CLI, but it just seemed very finicky for me.

1. Tagging doesn't work if you don't import every song in an album at once (see https://www.reddit.com/r/musichoarder/comments/1j0wnbz/need_... and dev comments on https://github.com/beetbox/beets/issues/5014)

2. Even when you do import a full album, it often struggles to match tracks. Here's part of a transcript I saved:

    Match (29.3%):
    StarSystems - Lift
    ≠ artist, album, tracks, unmatched tracks
    MusicBrainz, CD-R, 2019, GB, None, None, None
    https://musicbrainz.org/release/7c68b7ff-27c0-4da7-8430-d4228c6f6ff8
    ≠ Artist:  -> StarSystems
        ≠ (#0) StarSystems - Arrival [2238026155].mp3 (1:08) -> (#1) Arrival (1:08)
        ≠ (#0) StarSystems - Slipstream [1268364723].mp3 (6:23) -> (#2) Flower (6:25)
        ≠ (#0) StarSystems - Trigger Fish [1805252711].mp3 (5:06) -> (#3) Party Time (5:03)
        ≠ (#0) StarSystems - Moth [857985311].mp3 (4:51) -> (#4) Moth (4:51)
        ≠ (#0) StarSystems - Vortex [1717930774].mp3 (5:38) -> (#5) Vortex (5:38)
        ≠ (#0) StarSystems - Flower [3129604796].mp3 (6:25) -> (#6) Slipstream (6:23)
        ≠ (#0) StarSystems - Party Time [545976708].mp3 (5:03) -> (#7) Trigger Fish (5:06)
        ≠ (#0) StarSystems - Lift (feat. Jordan Rudess) [3330158657].mp3 (8:09) -> (#8) Lift (feat. Jordan Rudess) (8:09)
        ≠ (#0) StarSystems - Disengage [526901544].mp3 (2:01) -> (#9) Disengage (2:01)
    Unmatched tracks (1):
    !  (#0) (5:06)
     Apply, More candidates, Skip, Use as-is, as Tracks, Group albums,
    Rescan directory, Enter search, enter Id, aBort?

Look at tracks #2, #3, #6, #7. Why is it trying to switch the names around, even though the original name + length is right, and the new name + length is wrong?

Picard has worked flawlessly for me so far, it's just a shame it can't be automated.

Ah, yeah — it was a rough process when I moved my library to it, but I have a rather involved workflow around it https://www.coryd.dev/posts/2026/expanding-my-music-pipeline

> Saved you a download.

You did, thank you!

I have to give a +1 on this article. I'm not a big mouse gesture fan or user but I do agree with the mindset to use best tool available for the task. What 'best' means is subjective but I like discovering new tools or options I didn't know I have. Thanks!

The conclusion is very much true: “The book has to be a book that people actually want to read,”.

I'm not sure I understand his example:

    “I need to configure this server and the server needs to know if this value is true or false.”
    No, that’s bad. Don’t do that. That’s not a good use for XML.

But on the other hand, if you need to mark something bold, then XML is a great choice.

I see both cases as being quite equivalent: whether the server needs to know that a value is true/false or that it needs to display something as bold feels quite the same thing, isn't it?

Or does he mean that you cannot easily retrieve the value of an arbitrary XML element? Whereas to display a document you just process it sequentially and do not need to 'retrieve' arbitrary data. Is this it?

I think I'm with the author on this. The two scenarios are very different. Bold text is probably a span of text within a larger block of text: delimiting it with an opening and closing tag makes sense. A config value is a boolean switch.

This makes sense:

    <element>Some text here. <bold>Some more text here.</bold> And yet further text here.</element>

This does not:

    <value>true</value>

That should be:

    value: true

A better XML encoding would be the following, optimally with a schema that would define allowed values.

    <setting name="foo" value="true"/>

That still feels ugly and verbose to me.

I don't disagree, but it's easier to rigorously validate than lighter-weight markup languages, if that's important to the use case.

It's only a construction to justify author's biases.

Literally every article is that. What’s your point?

Oh, I was only saying that the article isn't saying that you cannot easily retrieve the value of an arbitrary XML element. It simply putting together selected examples that should deserve YAML and convince us that we must swear XML true.

Well, life isn't black and white, but somewhat greyscale. From my experience, none is better and they don't share the same use-cases.

Void linux: very simple and easy to use, fast boot, runit instead of systemd, user packages (via xbps-src)... it's simply a joy to use.

Void linux. For personal use, I switched to it couple of years ago after I had some weird issues on Ubuntu. Very stable, everything works as expected: the OS is just there in the background, almost unnoticed, as an OS should be.

I mistakenly read the title as "can't fly" instead of "can": I read the whole article waiting for the answer of why birds cannot fly over the Everest. Of course that answer didn't came but I learned some interesting things from it. I'd like to see/read more such "So so stories", they're perfect for gainining basic awareness about a topic, bird lungs for example.

I use it because I like to have all my wiki tabs in one place. I can also save tabs for offline reading. The app is very nice to use and it feels faster than the browser: one of the few cases where I like the app more than the web equivalent.

I liked the post and I'm afraid that the author is right on so many points.

Lots of persons seem to be "uninterested in serious personal development", is this by some design or just natural evolution of modern society? I guess it was always like this, but I can also imagine that there are entities (ie, companies, governments, people) that are doing some thing or the other trying to keep the status quo: keep the people in the right state to consume as much as possible...

It's a consequence of our unprecedented prosperity that we can fret about such things as "personal development." See how much you worry about personal development when you're trying to bring in enough of a harvest to meet your caloric needs.

>Lots of persons seem to be "uninterested in serious personal development"

I don't think being uninterested in disengaging from consumer capitalism is akin to being uninterested in personal development. Being pro-mindfullness and anti-consumer is valid, but so is being pro-consumer and uninterested in mindfullness (because they are chasing other goals, which could be considered part of personal development). The mistake the author makes is assuming their goals are the best way to go, and then prescribing solutions for that.

The author's point of view is actually just fairly narrow. There is nothing wrong with their view, or the ideas they suggest for improving one's life if you share his perspective. But a lot of people simply don't share that view. As a counterpoint, some people (not mine) think the highest goal in life is to work as much as possible. They will do so, and probably consume a lot in order to maximise their time working. That goal and lifestyle might seem unsavoury to me or you, but it is another way to personal development: that you can, personally, be a really good worker.