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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

#91

Post by homeonthemtn »

stavros wrote: post #74

Decades ago, an old friend told me "I became a coffee expert, I learned everything there is to learn about beans, the ways to prepare them, the chemistry that goes into it, and now I can only enjoy a cup of coffee prepared by the most expensive machines from the most expensive beans. The shit part is that I enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed my shitty supermarket coffee back when I didn't know anything about coffee."…

This is the curve of mastery.

I think there's a saying that you learn decades of music so that you can forget it and just play - fairly similar things here

You learn things to the point of mastery. Mastery proves all the ways things won't work, leaving you with what will.

And often what will work are the fundamentals.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#92

Post by ants_everywhere »

stavros wrote: post #74

Decades ago, an old friend told me "I became a coffee expert, I learned everything there is to learn about beans, the ways to prepare them, the chemistry that goes into it, and now I can only enjoy a cup of coffee prepared by the most expensive machines from the most expensive beans. The shit part is that I enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed my shitty supermarket coffee back when I didn't know anything about coffee."…

I deliberately avoided cultivating a taste in coffee and wine after having acquired a taste for good whisky. For exactly the same reason you mention: I knew my utility from drinking coffee/wine would stay constant, but the time and money cost of acquiring them would significantly increase.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#93

Post by cyberax »

stavros wrote: post #74

Decades ago, an old friend told me "I became a coffee expert, I learned everything there is to learn about beans, the ways to prepare them, the chemistry that goes into it, and now I can only enjoy a cup of coffee prepared by the most expensive machines from the most expensive beans. The shit part is that I enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed my shitty supermarket coffee back when I didn't know anything about coffee."…

On the other hand, a part of becoming an expert in some field should be getting to be _realistic_. Learn not to deceive yourself.

I can give you an example from my experience. I got annoyed by my dull knives, so at first I went and bought really expensive knives, the ones made of hardened high-carbon steel that start rusting if you look at them dirtily. And I spent hours reading reviews before buying them. That's probably the "most expensive cup of coffee" stage.

Then I stumbled upon a Youtube channel that explained how to sharpen knives properly. So I bought $70 worth of diamond sharpening stones and re-sharpened my old IKEA knives. And they started working almost as well as my set of ultra-expensive knives, but they are far more practical. The expensive knife set is now a display piece in my kitchen.

Another revelation for me was that past a certain point, there's really not that much difference in the quality of sushi. It's just rice and sliced fish. Sure, there are individual variations between chefs in rice-to-fish ratio, maybe some special soy sauce here and there, but these are all just matters of personal taste. So I now just enjoy sushi for its taste. And instead of a looking for reservations in expensive restaurants, I just drop by my local sushi place and just ask the chef to add a bit more wasabi to the rice.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#94

Post by SchemaLoad »

citruscomputing wrote: post #65

This applies to fashion as well. Hackers should tinker with their clothes and jewelry more.

My coworkers are shocked and confused that I own/use a sewing machine and see at as some legacy old timey thing. It's true that you certainly don't need to own one anymore and you won't save any money making your own clothes. But you can modify and make loads of custom cool stuff that are impossible to buy new.

I've got a few things I made that just bring a lot of joy knowing it's the exact thing I wanted which you can't buy, and couldn't justify paying someone else to make either.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#95

Post by CharlieDigital » 

    > I have come to understand that there are two kinds of people, those who do things only if it helps them achieve a goal, and those who do things just because.
I think in this age of vibe coding where anyone can code anything, the discriminating factor between two developers, at a technical level, just comes down to "good taste" (lots of other more important factors, too, like a good human to work with).

And like the author, I agree that taste is acquired through tinkering and trying to be able to discern the qualities of one approach or one design over another. You can't have good taste in anything without having tried lots of variants in that domain -- wine, sushi, furniture, color, style, etc. Having this quality now is more important than ever for senior devs and mid-level devs that want to reach the next level.

When anyone can vibe code, it is the ones with "good taste" in the design of systems that will thrive. Anyone can use an agent and code fast; few will be able to do it fast and well and build systems that do not eventually collapse under the weight of their own tangled mess.

How to acquire it? Have a folder called `sandbox` and just build small projects in there and try new ideas, new techniques, new libraries you come across. Used a particularly interesting package? Go check out the GitHub repo and see how they did it; learn something new. Good taste can be acquired; it just surprises me how few devs actually care to seek it.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#96

Post by layer8 »

al_borland wrote: post #86
melagonster wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. But taste is a skill that should be learned. People who have better taste can select better stuff by their skill.

I feel this is kind of missing the point that was being made. “Better” is subjective. If taste is being learned, who is the teacher? Are you learning about your own tastes or adopting the tastes of the teacher? Who has better taste, the user of spaces or tabs? There is no right answer, just those who agree with you and those who don’t.

Some tastes are acquired.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#97

Post by joshdavham »

Could someone here pitch me on neovim?

I'm a VSCode user and when I hear people talk about neovim and it customizability or its productivity, I think to myself "VSCode is also very customizable and there's a lot of ways to get a lot of productivity out of it, why would I use neovim?".

Surely there's something I'm missing? Does it help you stay more in the flow or something? Is it because it's faster? Maybe it's because it's an editor you can easily use while ssh'd into a remote machine? Please enlighten me!

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#98

Post by wslh »

stavros wrote: post #74

Decades ago, an old friend told me "I became a coffee expert, I learned everything there is to learn about beans, the ways to prepare them, the chemistry that goes into it, and now I can only enjoy a cup of coffee prepared by the most expensive machines from the most expensive beans. The shit part is that I enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed my shitty supermarket coffee back when I didn't know anything about coffee."…

I imagine your friend is talking about specific coffee preparations like "espresso" because, for example, there are hundreds of years of traditional Arabic coffee that continue to be appreciated for generations. Your friend reminds me of this movie scene in Mulholland Drive[1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVI-Jew-iHo

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#99

Post by layer8 »

gnarlouse wrote: post #77

Reminds me of the Steve Jobs biography. He was a notorious tinkerer. He obsessed over the design of Macintosh, the NeXT step cube, and a bunch of other products.

I don’t think he tinkered much himself. He let others tinker until their output met his vision.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#100

Post by DauntingPear7 »

joshdavham wrote: post #97

Could someone here pitch me on neovim? I'm a VSCode user and when I hear people talk about neovim and it customizability or its productivity, I think to myself "VSCode is also very customizable and there's a lot of ways to get a lot of productivity out of it, why would I use neovim?". Surely there's something I'm missing? Does it help you stay more in the flow or something? Is it because it's faster? Maybe it's becau…

If you dislike the terminal or aren’t comfortable there, you should try using the vim keybinds for VSCode. They’ll get you most of the way there, and the rest is a lot of customization to get things how you like. The vim motions are the best part! They take a while to get used to, but they’re incredibly convenient.
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