The case for ephemeral workstations

I'm about a week into using Omarchy (on a 2017 Macbook), and I've been thinking a lot about how much customization or not I want to be doing on it, seeing that it's more of an exploration than a long-term plan to use this almost decade-old machine.

One thought that has stuck with me, came from hearing DHH talk with Adam Wathan a few weeks ago:

DHH: "I don't have anything on an individual computer that I care about. That computer will at most have a minute or two of local state that's not disposable. And that's just until I hit "git commit" or whatever.

The second I've done that, I could take that box and I could chuck it out the window. It can be stolen, it could get lost, it could burn down, and none of my data is gone. None of my configurations are gone. I have everything reproducible.

So I knew the second I started on Omarchy that I wanted that again."

The whole process with setting up Omarchy as a work station has made me very aware of every aspect along the way, and the value in making the whole setup reproducible.

It's an interesting learning experience, and it definitely also affects how I work on the MacOS. Instead of mindlessly letting the downloads folder etc. growing, I've become more aware of cleaning up and sorting things where they should be. Both as an effect of switching between the mac and omarchy machines daily now, but also as a result of starting out on a clean install again and wanting to keep it as close to that as possible.

I always felt a bit icky about setting up a new mac machine based on an old one. It's easy, but it always feels like I drag along a lot of old stuff I no longer need. Better to start fresh each time and keep the setup to a minimum.

Seeing how nice of a setup I have on the Omarchy as a first time user, in less than one week (on an old machine) has made me realize that maybe I'm not as dependent on my macbook as I previously thought.