Comment by llm_nerd

Comment by llm_nerd 5 hours ago

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This is totally an aside, but I wonder how long the "Swiss army knife" metaphor will hang on in popular culture. People generally use it to indicate that something does a variety of things, but I'd say many of younger generation have never touched if even seen such a knife in their life, and even among older generations it doesn't have a positive connotation.

Like when I hear something is the Swiss army knife of something, my take is that it does a lot of things poorly and there are better specific tools for every need. Like if you need a really terrible knife or bottle opener or screwdriver or saw, a Swiss Army knife has you covered. But it should be a tool of last resort when you have no other options.

IAmBroom 4 hours ago

And thus the Leatherman(tm) was born from its ashes.

And too quickly smothered in copycats for its name to become the new metaphor.

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crazygringo 4 hours ago

Swiss Army knives seem to be as popular as ever. What do you mean, doesn't have a positive connotation?

They're great hiking, camping, traveling, in backpacks and bags.

What's wrong with it as a knife? It's perfectly sharp. Obviously it's not a full-sized chef's knife, but it will cut your apple or twine or packing tape. It's a multitool. It does lots of things. A tool of "last resort" seems to miss the point -- it's not meant to use at home, when you have a full-size screwdriver and bottle opener and corkscrew. It's for traveling with you. And it's great at that.

SAK's are iconic. I don't think your take is a common one.

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  • IAmBroom 4 hours ago

    Be serious. If someone in 2025 has a pocket multitool, there's about a 1% chance it is red with a white cross on it.

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    • crazygringo 4 hours ago

      ??

      Obviously it's not the only game in town ever since Leatherman made the pliers-style tool popular as well.

      But you can just look up the various brands on Amazon to see that SAK's continue to sell very well, by "x bought in the last month."

      It's nowhere near 1%, I don't know where you're getting that.

      Edit: according to [1] Victorinox has the #1 spot in market share in multitools. The share is a bit higher than it is for SOG and Leatherman, though they're both close.

      [1] https://www.marketreportanalytics.com/reports/swiss-army-kni...

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    • jacekm 4 hours ago

      Lots of cheap (and good) Chinese alternatives entered the market recently but I'd say Victorinox is still going strong. In Poland it's sold everywhere and the brand is very recognizable.

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  • llm_nerd 4 hours ago

    >Swiss Army knives seem to be as popular as ever.

    It isn't as popular as ever, at least not in the Western world. I don't know what your frame of reference is, but it is positively non-existent compared to a couple of decades ago. Approximately zero kids, give or take a few, put one on their Christmas list, where when I was a kid it was many kid's dream item. I would say the most common buyer today are middle-aged men who buy it just as a thing to own because they remember how desirable they were when they were in Scouts in their teens.

    >A tool of "last resort" seems to miss the point

    It is quite literally a tool of last resort, and in practice people who actually own one (such as myself) have often never, ever actually used any of the options available on it because they're terrible options and we always have something better available.

    Like a legitimate folding camping knife, which we all have in our camping supplies. An infinitely better knife. A tiny multi-screwdriver kit. The Leatherman brand went big by making a legitimately good, well constructed pair of pliers that they add some "in a pinch" options.

    Serious campers who portage and go deep country have a proper assortment of gear and never lean on their SAK. The rest of us usually get there in a car and have a...proper assortment of gear.

    But again, if you're in a situation where you have to use one of the tools on a SAK, you probably screwed up and it's a serious compromise. It just isn't a compelling metaphor for software tooling.

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    • crazygringo 4 hours ago

      See my other comment for its popularity statistics. Victorinox is literally the #1 multitool brand by market share. These are facts.

      Your take is idiosyncratic. Using a SAK doesn't mean "you probably screwed up". That's truly a bizarre thing to say.

      A SAK is a perfectly fine metaphor. That's why it's a popular one. It's a small tool that does lots of things. I think you're overthinking this.

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      • llm_nerd 3 hours ago

        >Victorinox is literally the #1 multitool brand by market share

        This doesn't repudiate anything I said, and it's a particularly weird canard.

        >That's why it's a popular one

        Increasingly the only ones I see leveraging the metaphor are English as a second language writers (note that the idiom originates in English and is a calque in other languages) who perhaps came across it somewhere. I would hardly call it "popular", and I pointed out the reality that many readers, such as myself, find it a negative description, similar to someone calling themselves a "jack of all trades". Your defensiveness of SAK does not change this, and your attempts at invalidating my statement borders on bizarre.

        Feel free to continue. I'm done here.

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