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Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

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Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#41

Post by cedws »

saxelsen wrote: post #22

I used to resonate with the word "taste" as a distinguishing factor between good and bad quality, but a comment on HN some months ago about one of the many blog posts that talks about taste really nailed it: "Taste" is just the degree to which two people value the same things. When someone is rated as having "good taste" it just means that the person rating them values a lot of the same qualities. The more I thought…

I would argue that taste is the ability to reason about one's own preferences.

A person who doesn't consider themself to have a taste in music and listens casually won't really be able to reason about why they like the music they do other than "I like the band" or "I like the song."

A person with taste in music is going to have listened to a larger variety, be able to speak passionately about it, and justify why they like and dislike particular music.

One is a boneheaded consumer, one is a fanatic.

Similarly with wine, you can't claim you've got taste when you've been drinking only red your whole life.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#42

Post by kingkongjaffa »

andy99 wrote: post #24
saxelsen wrote: post #22

I used to resonate with the word "taste" as a distinguishing factor between good and bad quality, but a comment on HN some months ago about one of the many blog posts that talks about taste really nailed it: "Taste" is just the degree to which two people value the same things. When someone is rated as having "good taste" it just means that the person rating them values a lot of the same qualities. The more I thought…

I understood “taste” here to mean opinions. It’s not “good taste” it’s just “some taste”. IMO there are many ways to express taste that are not tinkering, such as preferentially selecting things and my personal favourite, complaining :) Nevertheless I think he means opinions rather than some universally good taste.

I'd like to refine this a bit because I agree, but in a slightly different way.

> I understood “taste” here to mean opinions.

Good taste is the ability to have nuanced and specific opinions.

This comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45740478 said it well:

> 2. How well you're able to understand the medium and identify the differences between things.

Combining these two ideas: Taste is the ability to understand the topic/craft/medium well enough to have a strong opinion about what good is, and usually that opinion is similar to other well experienced practitioners.

In software engineering it's the ability to recognize an elegant solution that avoids pitfalls that the observer may have experienced in the past.

In other fields it might be that someone with good taste can better understand and appreciate the process or journey to get to whatever $thing is being evaluated, and they appreciate the $thing more because they can empathize more fully with the creator, compared to a layman.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#43

Post by aaronbrethorst »

SoftTalker wrote: post #23

I used to tinker with fonts, colors, etc but as I’ve gotten older I just accept the defaults in most things. You can waste any number of hours on that stuff and in the end it makes very little difference.

Or in this case, tinkering with fonts simply reduces legibility.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#45

Post by dineol »

SoftTalker wrote: post #23

I used to tinker with fonts, colors, etc but as I’ve gotten older I just accept the defaults in most things. You can waste any number of hours on that stuff and in the end it makes very little difference.

^^^ this, with life coming more to the ending part you start to value your time that you got left

tinkering is good when you're < 30 or maybe even < 25

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#47

Post by kridsdale3 »

Herring wrote: post #40

If you're going to make changes, make big changes. Learn to squat 100kg. Finish a triathlon. Learn intermediate Chinese. These are all impactful goals you can hit in a year, worth way more than colors and fonts.

Nobody who is raising children is able to do those things in a year.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#48

Post by Herring »

SoftTalker wrote: post #23

I used to tinker with fonts, colors, etc but as I’ve gotten older I just accept the defaults in most things. You can waste any number of hours on that stuff and in the end it makes very little difference.

I still tinker as I get older, except instead of fonts I'm buying a dual monitor setup with a 6-foot standing desk.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#49

Post by jonplackett »

SoftTalker wrote: post #23

I used to tinker with fonts, colors, etc but as I’ve gotten older I just accept the defaults in most things. You can waste any number of hours on that stuff and in the end it makes very little difference.

I wish I could tinker with the font on this website. It flickers as it scrolls and does my head in!

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#50

Post by paulcole »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #15
paulcole wrote: post #6

> Have you ever spent hours tweaking the mouse sensitivity in your favorite FPS game? Ah yes, the true shibboleth of taste-havers.

Maybe tinkering is a necessary but insufficient condition for taste

Do you think it is?
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