I was wrong btw

ThePrimeagen explains why he switched to Arch Linux and why navigation speed — not keystroke savings — is the real dev productivity lever.

• PewDiePie shaming him on Twitter was the actual trigger for switching to Arch Linux after years of mocking it.
• His core philosophy: optimize for developer experience speed, not aesthetics — animations are disabled entirely in Hyperland.
• Switched modifier key from Alt to Super after 8 years of muscle memory, because Alt conflicts with too many programs.
• Uses Ghostty + tmux + Neovim without AI plugins; plans to evaluate Avante and Super Maven in July on a Twitch stream.
• ~80% of Neovim navigation is LSP-based (GD, shift-K, leader-RR); Harpoon handles the rest for single-key file jumping.
• Core thesis: most editing time is spent finding where to be, not typing — optimizing navigation saves mental cycles, not just milliseconds.
• Every line of custom config is liability; stopped writing personal shortcuts because upstream changes break them silently.
• Undotree is underrated because undo history is a tree with branches, not linear — and git is just a formalized version of that.

2025-07-03 · Watch on YouTube