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Such a great read. This sentence is particularly chilling: > you could be intellectually stuck right at this very moment, with the evidence right in front of your face and you just can’t see it.
I have read this article already and "reality has a surprising amount of detail" has become a phrase for me. But, I read it again today because the writing is so good. This guy is a gifted writer.
The first time I built a freestanding bookshelf, I put a lot of effort into making the feet level and the back straight and at a right angle to the feet. Once I put it up against the wall I'd built it for, I realized I'd solved completely different problem than the problem I really had. I needed crooked bookshelf, since the wall was totally tilted. In the end I screwed some wall shelves in and called it good enough.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you have endless budget, many things can be one-shot. You can't do a test run first, or roll back a cut if the length is too short. You can patch misplaced nail holes, or re-dig a hole (messing up filling a hole with concrete is another matter) and hope you don't kill a tree transplanting it, but the end result isn't clean. The best I could do with woodworking in the end to approximate programming was live wit…
Woodworking taught me a lot about planning and design. As a young person, I was like the authors brother. I just wanted to do the thing, not draw a diagram and figure out how much wood I need, or build a fixture to mark the stair lines. Woodworking (the more constructive, furniture-making kind), rewards a deliberate, controlled process and it savagely penalizes mistakes. Those lessons transfer well to other disciplin…
Woodworking was part of my first 3 years of high school, but it was mainly about learning safety and tool usage and not planning, estimating, selecting or purchasing timber.
These days I only want to go to the lumberyard once for a project. Learnt the hard way on my first project that you need to take the time to carefully select the timber - checking straightness, matching grain and also colour before I started. Major hassle and waste of time to have to go back to swap boards.
The first time I built a freestanding bookshelf, I put a lot of effort into making the feet level and the back straight and at a right angle to the feet. Once I put it up against the wall I'd built it for, I realized I'd solved completely different problem than the problem I really had. I needed crooked bookshelf, since the wall was totally tilted. In the end I screwed some wall shelves in and called it good enough.
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of my first real DIY projects during a summer in college nearly 20 years ago was replacing the rotted out basement bulkhead doors on the ~120 year old house I grew up in. I took measurements of the old ones, bought some nice tongue-and-groove cedar and high-quality hardware, and built the new doors in the garage. When they were fully assembled, I carried them over to install on the old stone frame. I took off the…
I feel this in my soul. I thought I could replace a door in a day, but months of fiddling, I discovered by frame is not only a parallelogram but it literally shifts by over an inch between seasons. (~100yr old house 2nd floor)
> As you learn, notice which details actually change how you think.
Lovely article. The older I get the more I appreciate this.
One point worth making: in many cases, after learning to see & appreciate the details, you gain the power to ignore the details that don't matter to you. This can be quite freeing.
The first time I built a freestanding bookshelf, I put a lot of effort into making the feet level and the back straight and at a right angle to the feet. Once I put it up against the wall I'd built it for, I realized I'd solved completely different problem than the problem I really had. I needed crooked bookshelf, since the wall was totally tilted. In the end I screwed some wall shelves in and called it good enough.
Soon you realize that an surprising amount of walls are just not straight or level.