they will tell you the machines are tools
tools do not have uptime. tools do not page you at 02:14 because a certificate expires in 18 days and something in the bowels of a cron you forgot decided that is tonight’s problem. tools do not accumulate state. tools do not get lonely in a rack with only blinkenlights for company. i have sat on cold tile at 4am with a laptop on my knees watching a cursor because a box across the country was thinking and i needed to be there when it finished thinking even though my presence changes nothing. that is not tooling. that is a relationship with worse UX