Right this second, I'm getting a little sick of the kind of music that FL Studio makes easy. I miss the sound I used to get out of Impulse Tracker. I don't think you can get the kind of effortlessly precise control of samples that trackers give you with any modern tool. But sample-based trackers are their own thing by nature and don't integrate well into the modern tool-chain.

I think the solution -- and it's not really a solution, just something that's important to be, I don't know, a well-rounded artist or programmer -- is to always be learning new tools. So you always know what you're missing out on.

But who has that kind of time? Somebody who's deeply focused on their field. In effect, to be a well-rounded artist or programmer, you can't also be a well-rounded human being. I wonder if you could also describe someone as a well-rounded user of a specific tool, like C or printf(3).

On Twitter: @mogwai_poet