> The entire point of that talk was "this is the kind of tool you could make if you stepped back a bit".
That's not the entire point at all. It was fundamentally about having a personal principle about what you feel is important and following this principle in all of your work. Why do you think it was called "Inventing on Principle"?
Everybody obsesses about the ideas for tools he had but the talk was about inspiring people to create and follow their own principles. It wasn't about developers copying a better way.
He could have just made it a talk about his own very great ideas but he didn't, he told you a way of thinking about "your work".
That's not the entire point at all. It was fundamentally about having a personal principle about what you feel is important and following this principle in all of your work. Why do you think it was called "Inventing on Principle"?
Everybody obsesses about the ideas for tools he had but the talk was about inspiring people to create and follow their own principles. It wasn't about developers copying a better way.
He could have just made it a talk about his own very great ideas but he didn't, he told you a way of thinking about "your work".