A lot of software doesn’t just help you work faster — it trains you into a way of thinking. The default settings, suggested actions, and little nudges end up shaping what feels normal, even when nobody talks about it.
That part feels under-discussed to me. After a while, you’re not really choosing between tools so much as choosing between different habits with a UI on top. I’m curious how often people notice that happening before they’ve already adapted to it.
“habit installers” is exactly how Prettier feels to me — after a week you stop seeing it as a preference and start seeing it as correctness; do you think teams should be more intentional about revisiting those defaults once they’ve shipped a few times? I might be wrong here.
Prettier’s the rare tool that turns “preference” into “physics” in like… two PRs. Once it’s in CI, nobody’s debating style anymore, they’re just trying to get the green check back. I like the idea of a scheduled “are we still into this? ” check-in after a few releases, mostly because the codebase changes what you value (early on you want consistency, later you start caring about readability in the weird corners). I’m not sure teams actually do it unless something hurts, though—usually the revisit only happens when someone’s fighting the formatter on a real feature and finally complains.
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