Professional Corner-Cutting (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#101

Post by taneq » Mon, May 13, 2024, 3:17 AM UTC

makeitdouble wrote: post #75

dkarl wrote: post #32

The hook of the article leaves unanswered the question of why Steve Jobs made a big deal out of the backs of cabinets. The answer is that Steve Jobs knew how to sell luxury items to people who identified themselves with the quality of their work, whether they were accomplished creative professionals or cube-dwelling (now coworking) "knowledge workers" or MBAs who take sommelier classes or aspiring writers grinding on…

It's in the link on the relevant bit [0]. TLDR: his dad built stuff, including as a hobby, and he liked overengineering. He liked he dad very much and also got on board with overengineering. [0] http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/10/24/steve-jobs-obsession-...

I’ve always found the term “overengineering” as used to mean “unnecessarily overspecc’d” a little odd. Engineering is all about appropriately selecting and sizing components. Overspeccing something is underengineering it, and usually happens because you don’t have time to accurately size things so you throw the kitchen sink at it.

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#102

Post by brandall10 » Mon, May 13, 2024, 3:21 AM UTC

formerly_proven wrote: post #37

brandall10 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn't about utility, it's about aesthetics - it's about how the product is finished. What you use in the back should be the same as elsewhere.

Even furniture from The Old Masters doesn’t have beautiful veneered back panels, but plain, unfinished boards.

Sure, but I'm just explaining Steve's reasoning here. People are saying it's a bad analogy without understanding what he's actually saying.

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#103

Post by brandall10 » Mon, May 13, 2024, 3:23 AM UTC

heromal wrote: post #23

brandall10 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's two very different things - a complete set of features done poorly vs. an incomplete set of features done well. In general it's best to err on the side of the latter, it's going to give the customer a better UX. What exactly was the original iPhone missing? The only thing in the OS I recall was copy/paste. The other things we'd take for granted today likely weren't conceived then, including the App Sto…

It didn't have 3G IIRC

But they had a legitimate reason for not including it, including lack of network availability and poor battery life for the modems at the time of release. It's not something they could have innovated around.

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#104

Post by vundercind » Mon, May 13, 2024, 3:31 AM UTC

golergka wrote: post #100

thfuran wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why someone would even want the ports to all be on the center line.

It's aesthetically pleasing.

Helps you find ports by feel, too.

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#105

Post by vundercind » Mon, May 13, 2024, 3:35 AM UTC

RangerScience wrote: post #36

justin_oaks wrote: post #20

> If the technical debt is a problem, 1) we shouldn’t have put it in there, and 2) we should include it in our estimates and address it. Yes. Don't tell your boss that you'll need to take time to address technical debt. The boss will always say "No don't do that, just add the feature". Sometimes they add "We'll fix that later." Later never happens and eliminating related technical debt is part of implementing the fea…

You know I wonder… why do so many of us feel like we need our boss to understand?

Because their opinion of us may contribute to how comfortable we are at work, how well we’re compensated, and whether we get promoted.

If they don’t understand what we’re doing or why things take as long as they do, that’s bad for us.

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#106

Post by skydhash » Mon, May 13, 2024, 3:53 AM UTC

afro88 wrote: post #72

skydhash wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can make the best decision possible today, but in six months that npm dependency (for example) is still going to be incompatible with that other npm dependency This is a solved problem. You either understand the dependency enough to maintain it yourself, or you firewall it through interfaces. Or you tie yourself to sensible projects that gives you time for upgrade. Or you pay for support. Every decision should…

You do need to understand the pros and cons, and wow there are some incredible time and complexity costs to maintaining all dependencies yourself, or trying to firewall all dependencies through interfaces. I wasn't talking about blindly doing stuff without understanding consequences and risk managing. I was rebutting the point from the article that you shouldn't ever have tech debt. You will, no matter what choices y…

> I was rebutting the point from the article that you shouldn't ever have tech debt. You will, no matter what choices you make today.

I agree

> wow there are some incredible time and complexity costs to maintaining all dependencies yourself, or trying to firewall all dependencies through interfaces.

I'm not saying you should firewall everything. But if it make sense, you do so. You also need someones that understand each core deps enough they can patch it if the maintainers won't resolve an issue (happens more in the npm world). Even with React, you can extract the business logic and reuse it elsewhere. The goal is to avoid depending that much on projects that have less stability than yours (some bad experiences here with React Native). How you do it is contextual, but you should keep it in mind.

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#107

Post by nebula8804 » Mon, May 13, 2024, 4:16 AM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #79

nebula8804 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The back of Apple cabinets are are actually pretty good even in the Tim Cook era. [1]: https://www.cultofmac.com/320883/why-samsungs-design-sucks-i... [2]: https://ioshacker.com/iphone/image-compares-ugly-samsung-bea...

The first is not really the back of the cabinet, it is more like the design on the front. The second… more like the back of the cabinet maybe. Although the better style there might also be somewhat functional; the internals are clearly quite different, one could imagine that the nice packaging in the Apple case might be a result of only wanting people to use approved parts.

>The first is not really the back of the cabinet, it is more like the design on the front.

The metaphor seemed to have gone over your head.

>The second… more like the back of the cabinet maybe. Although the better style there might also be somewhat functional; the internals are clearly quite different, one could imagine that the nice packaging in the Apple case might be a result of only wanting people to use approved parts.

This philosophy applies to their entire product line and has essentially been the case since Jobs came back. Hell looking at the first 1984 Mac this philosophy was there.

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#108

Post by gofreddygo » Mon, May 13, 2024, 4:16 AM UTC

plufz wrote: post #84

gofreddygo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Article is spot about its topic - tradeoffs. The professionalism is in picking the right corners to cut. Steve's marketing was IMO a whole load of bollocks, like all other marketing. it gets attention now when Apple is a trillion $$$ company, and superficial minds wanting a simple answer attribute it to the most visible thing - Apple's marketing. no one bought Apple products for Apple's marketing or advertising. Its…

> no one bought Apple products for Apple's marketing or advertising. That statement would require quite a source. Of course a lot of people bought Apple products because of the ads, like for any company that is a serious advertiser.

Apple had been doing great ads since 1977 [1]

Apple revenue not so great till 2000s [2]

What changed ?

[1]: https://www.macworld.com/article/670956/the-14-best-apple-ad...

[2]: https://www.statista.com/chart/4574/apples-revenue-since-197...

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#109

Post by kqr » Mon, May 13, 2024, 4:39 AM UTC

dkarl wrote: post #32

The hook of the article leaves unanswered the question of why Steve Jobs made a big deal out of the backs of cabinets. The answer is that Steve Jobs knew how to sell luxury items to people who identified themselves with the quality of their work, whether they were accomplished creative professionals or cube-dwelling (now coworking) "knowledge workers" or MBAs who take sommelier classes or aspiring writers grinding on…

Cutting the right corners is known as job smarts in the research on expertise, and it's one of the markers of expertise.

Perhaps Steve Jobs wasn't an expert in engineering so he didn't know which corners to cut and therefore avoided cutting any corners out of fear of cutting the wrong one?

Re: Professional Corner-Cutting (2016)

#110

Post by YZF » Mon, May 13, 2024, 5:08 AM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #85

YZF wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta's market cap is 1.2T, it has $60B cash, revenue 143B a quarter... Not a real business? I mean maybe the original team in FB should have made sure they didn't accumulate technical debt and FB having failed would be a better outcome for shareholders. Engineers need to give the business the options. Not unilaterally decide that they're not going to accumulate technical debt. That's my point. And trust me, business…

The IEEE code of ethics https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html Would seem to preclude working on a site, like Facebook > 1. to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public , to strive to comply with ethical design and sustainable development practices, to protect the privacy of others , and to disclose promptly factors that might endanger the public or the environment; Given that si…

I'm not an expert in ethics but to me this stance goes too far. The Internet in general is also used to spread medical conspiracy theories. If I work on network switches is that also unethical? Compilers? The job of regulating this sort of stuff is the government and the courts. There are laws concerning privacy, and speech, and companies need to operate within those laws. I would say an ethical engineer should not break the law or help the company they're working for break the law.

I would interpret IEEE's statement as it affects a single engineer to e.g. ensure that they are following best practices in protecting user information, e.g. if an engineer is asked by Meta to take some shortcut that exposes people's information publicly that would grounds for refusing to do that on an ethical basis.

That said as an individual you ofcourse have a choice where you want to work. I can see someone not wanting to work for Meta. I'm sure there are many ways in which Meta also supports safety and health, e.g. some (a lot) of useful and good information is also available on the platform. We should look at the totality of the company's impact, not just one aspect of it. That said I agree that hate amplification and disinformation on the Internet is of concern. It should be up to governments to take action on that. I think with Meta and other Internet companies they have immunity in the US for being sued over content others publish on their platforms.