Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage • Hacker News Board

Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#171

Post by czhu12 » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 6:04 PM UTC

I think this is why it helps a lot to build something you actually use. Because then, the barometer for what is good becomes a lot more defined: "Did I solve the problem I had", and then slowly build up from there.

Instead of trying to imagine a thing that someone else might or might not need.

I've been slowly chipping away at a heroku alternative called Canine [1] for the better part of a year now on the side, and for once, I don't feel tons of pressure or self loathing for not working on it quickly enough.

I use it every day now, and whenever I come across something that I wish was a little better (at the moment, understanding how much memory is used by the cluster is a pet peeve), I ruminate on it for a few days before hopping in and making some changes. No more, no less. It helps me get away from "what is the perfect solution", to "can i fix this thing that annoys me right now"

[1] https://canine.sh

Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#172

Post by purplesyringa » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

nickelpro wrote: post #170

meander_water wrote: post #26

> the "taste-skill discrepancy." Your taste (your ability to recognize quality) develops faster than your skill (your ability to produce it). This creates what Ira Glass famously called "the gap," but I think of it as the thing that separates creators from consumers. This resonated quite strongly with me. It puts into words something that I've been feeling when working with AI. If you're new to something and using AI…

There's no meaningful taste-skill gap in programming because programming doesn't involve tacit skills. If you know what you're supposed to do, it is trivial to type that into a keyboard. The taste-skill gap emerges when you intellectually recognize what a quality creation would be, but are physically unable to produce that creation, and judge the creations you are physically capable of producing as low quality The of…

That's absolutely not the case. I can look at code and realize that it's garbage because the architecture sucks, performance degradation is out of the window, and there's lots of special casing and unhandled edge cases. That's the taste part. But I can also absolutely be underqualified and be unable to figure out how to improve the architecture, fix performance issues, or simplify special/edge case handling.

Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#173

Post by mjr00 » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

nickelpro wrote: post #170

meander_water wrote: post #26

> the "taste-skill discrepancy." Your taste (your ability to recognize quality) develops faster than your skill (your ability to produce it). This creates what Ira Glass famously called "the gap," but I think of it as the thing that separates creators from consumers. This resonated quite strongly with me. It puts into words something that I've been feeling when working with AI. If you're new to something and using AI…

There's no meaningful taste-skill gap in programming because programming doesn't involve tacit skills. If you know what you're supposed to do, it is trivial to type that into a keyboard. The taste-skill gap emerges when you intellectually recognize what a quality creation would be, but are physically unable to produce that creation, and judge the creations you are physically capable of producing as low quality The of…

> There's no meaningful taste-skill gap in programming because programming doesn't involve tacit skills. If you know what you're supposed to do, it is trivial to type that into a keyboard.

Strongly disagree here. The taste-skill gap still applies even when there's no mechanical skill involved. A lot of amateur music production is entirely "in the box" and the taste-skill gap very much exists, even though it's trivial to e.g. click a button to change a compressor's settings.

In programming, or more broadly application development, this manifests as crappy user interfaces or crappy APIs. Some developers may not notice or care, sure, but for many the feeling is, "this doesn't seem right, but I'm not exactly sure what's wrong or how to fix it." And that feeling is the taste-skill gap.

Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#174

Post by thenthenthen » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 6:33 PM UTC

RaftPeople wrote: post #166

gcanyon wrote: post #127

> At semester's end, all the best photos came from the quantity group. My parents once owned a photography studio. My stepfather often said something like, "A great photographer doesn't only take great photos; he takes many photos of various quality, and never shows anyone the bad ones."

I think the lesson at the end of that semester is a bit muddied. It says the quantity group figured out a bunch of stuff due to multiple photos being taken, but there are a couple things we don't know: 1-Just because the single photo group only submitted one photo, they may have taken just as many as the quantity group 2-How were "best" photos determined (by prof? by class vote?) If quality group took as many photos,…

This is not a very pedagogic method. Why divide the group?! Have everyone go thru the same exercise seems more valuable to me. This would get you fired today tbh.

Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#175

Post by thenthenthen » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 6:39 PM UTC

gcanyon wrote: post #128

>The quantity group would be graded on volume: one hundred photos for an A, ninety photos for a B, eighty photos for a C, and so on. > The quality group only need to present one perfect photo. > At semester's end, all the best photos came from the quantity group. I think the more interesting experiment would be to give both groups the same assignment in terms of volume, but tell the quality group they had to submit N…

Agree. This method is not sound nor pedagogically acceptable. This a big issue in art education still today.

Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#176

Post by chatmasta » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 6:48 PM UTC

webdevver wrote: post #124

chatmasta wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I’m wary of ever attempting a developer-focused startup ever again. What’s not mentioned is the utter frustration when you can see your own output is not up to your own expectations, but you can’t execute on any plan to resolve that discrepancy. “I know what developers want, so I can build it for them” is a death knell proportionate to your own standards… The most profitable business I built was s…

what was the $20k/mo business?

Selling proxies for scraping… this was circa 2011.

Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#177

Post by 0xbadcafebee » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 6:56 PM UTC

"The gap" is probably what allowed humans to evolve complex solutions. Rather than just bang things together, they had to think of how they would do it before they even began. That seems to be the differentiator between other animals and humans: we can shave a lot more yaks.

I have spent a year on a project that is not really much closer to completion than when I started. But I have been shaving yaks like a motherfucker. Research, design iterations, acquiring tools, making jigs, creating space. (I have also wasted a lot of time due to coping with ADHD and depression)

I could have done it sooner if I had compromised more. But I wasn't yet experienced enough to know what compromises to make and still end up with an acceptable solution. Many things have come up that I didn't expect in my initial dream. If I'd known then what I know now, I would have dialed things down.

Ignorance amplified my ambition, and my ambition exceeded my grasp. But if you never give up, it's not sabotage: it's perseverance. And I refuse to quit. My grasp is getting stronger. I'm moving forward faster, getting better. So my ambition (in this case) is a stupid form of self-improvement. It turns out I'm not building a camper. I'm building Me.

Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#178

Post by Loughla » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 7:00 PM UTC

skydhash wrote: post #130

Loughla wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with you. Please expand.

Not GP, but I agree with him and I will expand. The fact isn't that we don't know how to use AI. We've done so and the result can be very good sometimes (mostly because we know what's good and not). What's pushing us away from it is its unreliability. Our job is to automate some workflow (the business's and some of our owns') so that people can focus on the important matters and have the relevant information to make…

I understand that but I'm not sure how it's a response to my original statement.

Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#179

Post by zambal » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 7:21 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #148

gsf_emergency_2 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard that one way to pace is to... only consume your own stuff (aka dogfooding :) More grown-up way to do it is to consume your mates' stuff? (Trying to go from where TFA left off)

I think you must consume (I hate that word, but let's go with it) elsewhere. Someone said (maybe Stephen King in "On Writing"?) in order to be a writer you must be voracious reader, and there's no escaping this. It rings true to me. Of course the problem of taste growing much faster than skill remains, but I don't think the answer is to "consume" (yuck) less. I actually don't know if there's an answer.

I don't think it's actually a problem. Taste can guide the direction skill needs to go.

Re: Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

#180

Post by mitjam » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 7:31 PM UTC

mjr00 wrote: post #173

nickelpro wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no meaningful taste-skill gap in programming because programming doesn't involve tacit skills. If you know what you're supposed to do, it is trivial to type that into a keyboard. The taste-skill gap emerges when you intellectually recognize what a quality creation would be, but are physically unable to produce that creation, and judge the creations you are physically capable of producing as low quality The of…

> There's no meaningful taste-skill gap in programming because programming doesn't involve tacit skills. If you know what you're supposed to do, it is trivial to type that into a keyboard. Strongly disagree here. The taste-skill gap still applies even when there's no mechanical skill involved. A lot of amateur music production is entirely "in the box" and the taste-skill gap very much exists, even though it's trivial…

Yes and for me vibe coding / agent assisted coding is not just pouring canned skills but about developing skills to handle this new machine in a way to produce intended results.