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No Skill. No Taste

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Re: No Skill. No Taste

#171

Post by sarchertech »

internet2000 wrote: post #138
ianbutler wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not gate keeping anything, to do that I would have to make specific statements beyond "consider other people when you post something" Right and my point is you (or i) will never be consulted, it happens emergently through community dynamics. No one sat in a group and decided this, Show HN in particular has always been selective. Different things are interesting to different sub groups and they select for differen…

> I'm not gate keeping anything, Might be unintentional then, but the language in your post comes across as a textbook case of gatekeeping.

I think society could benefit from a little more gate keeping these days. IMO, we’ve swung way too far to the other direction. We all need a little friction and constraint.

Gate keeping isn’t inherently good, but I think Trump is essentially the right wing outcome of zero gate keeping.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#172

Post by raincole »

benrbray wrote: post #46
raincole wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> READMEs get to the front page and nobody seems to notice that it's written in grating Claudese Or you know, it's just not that important whether the README is written by Claude or not. Generally speaking people don't use a service/library for the author's ability to write excellent proses.

Presentation matters. Good documentation is evidence of a library that has been carefully thought through. Slop in the readme suggests slop in the code.

I've seen developers who genuinely like to write code, but never met one who likes to write documents. I know they exist somewhere, but I'd not judge someone's programming ability/willingness by their English writing ability/willingness.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#173

Post by onesandofgrain »

lumirth wrote: post #169

While I think there are plenty of reasons to be unhappy with this particular shift, I find myself struggling to care about it in particular. I get the impression that things will just be… different now. When finding an app for your phone, you might have to skip a few obviously vibe-coded ones to find what you actually want. But that’s not much different from before, when you’d have to filter through ads and apps that…

"skip a few", more like thousands? You doubt HN will suddenly? The mods are barely at work here lolz

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#174

Post by [deleted] »

wseqyrku wrote: post #157
lubesGordi wrote: post #47

I don't know man. I'm writing a flashcard app, and I like it. It makes me happy and it works the way I want. Exactly how I want. BC I could never get into quizlet. Whatever. Maybe others will like it, maybe not, I don't care. Taste is subjective. Having 1 million todo apps, great. Maybe someone I know will find one they like and tell me about it. Maybe I'll find one that doesn't suck. Maybe I'll just make my own. One…

> Taste is subjective. I would like to offer a counterexample: iPhone, when it first came out anyways. Tasteful design is rather so obvious that when you see it you'd say yes, this is what anyone would expect from a "phone". That doesn't seem to be so subjective.

[deleted]

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#175

Post by ianbutler »

XenophileJKO wrote: post #166
ianbutler wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not gate keeping anything, to do that I would have to make specific statements beyond "consider other people when you post something" Right and my point is you (or i) will never be consulted, it happens emergently through community dynamics. No one sat in a group and decided this, Show HN in particular has always been selective. Different things are interesting to different sub groups and they select for differen…

Shaming, ridiculing. People that dare to create something you don't like. Maybe the right answer is if you don't like what people are sharing that they made.. YOU make something and share it and lead by example instead of complaining.

First I never did that.

Second, I've founded several companies, had customers, put out products to be judged by the market and raised capital. I'm more than qualified to put out an opinion here. Been there done that.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#176

Post by sarchertech »

wseqyrku wrote: post #157
lubesGordi wrote: post #47

I don't know man. I'm writing a flashcard app, and I like it. It makes me happy and it works the way I want. Exactly how I want. BC I could never get into quizlet. Whatever. Maybe others will like it, maybe not, I don't care. Taste is subjective. Having 1 million todo apps, great. Maybe someone I know will find one they like and tell me about it. Maybe I'll find one that doesn't suck. Maybe I'll just make my own. One…

> Taste is subjective. I would like to offer a counterexample: iPhone, when it first came out anyways. Tasteful design is rather so obvious that when you see it you'd say yes, this is what anyone would expect from a "phone". That doesn't seem to be so subjective.

Except for all the people who used it and realized they hate touch screens for typing.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#177

Post by altmanaltman »

skydhash wrote: post #159
altmanaltman wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay but what does it mean in the context of coding or software? Like if someone claims good taste is the differentiator fod good and bad in software, they should have some basic objective ways to measure it right? If its just vibes we're going with then everyone has subjective taste and everyone's app is good. Overall I still think its meaningless/lazy to talk about vague terms as guiding principles or key different…

Have you ever been tasked to maintain a badly coded legacy app? Have you ever read some snippet that is so clear you don’t have anything to edit? Those are the opposite points of things. It’s not objective because the computer doesn’t care anyway. It’s like a well written prose vs a drunk’s rambling. They could describe the same scene, but one is much pleasurable to listen to. Or strolling through a well-tended garde…

Again, all of those are metaphors that describe a feeling and not anything concrete. Like what makes a codebase feel like "strolling through a well-tended garden"--there has to be some objective measures for that, right? Some things like "it's easier to maintain" or "it has really good readability," etc? Why are we not talking specifics of this "taste" instead of using The Karate Kid wax-on wax-off type metaphors?

And that is my central gripe with this piece--it doesn't care about the details and handwaves everything bad as having "bad taste." That is fundamentally lazy imo.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#178

Post by andai »

>The overall suffusion of this [slop] into the broader scene rightly has the more sensitive of us up in arms. It's noise, it's spam, it's a perversion of the years of skill we've spent accruing.

I realized recently that slop is not worthless. It actually has negative value! Just think of the Android app store. There are gems there, to be sure, but the gems are washed away by the sea of slop.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#179

Post by isicjsjcu »

ianbutler wrote: post #175
XenophileJKO wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shaming, ridiculing. People that dare to create something you don't like. Maybe the right answer is if you don't like what people are sharing that they made.. YOU make something and share it and lead by example instead of complaining.

First I never did that. Second, I've founded several companies, had customers, put out products to be judged by the market and raised capital. I'm more than qualified to put out an opinion here. Been there done that.

[dead]

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#180

Post by selridge »

ianbutler wrote: post #155
rbn3 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's not what they said at all though, sorry but the only one doing knee jerk reactions here seems to be you

Idk I've read a lot of Selridge's comments up and down the whole post now and it really seems like any idea of taste to them defaults to classism and then they misapply that framework here, which is realistically one of the fairest arenas. If someone likes what you make it doesn't matter where you come from.

It doesn’t default to class, people just pretend class doesn’t apply at all.

Taste is often advanced as this subjective yet ultimately discriminating notion which refuses to be pinned down. Insistent but ineffable. This idea that you and I know what good software is due to having paid dues and they don’t, and the truth will out, is a common one!

My argument isn’t that it’s class. It’s that this framework of describing taste is PURPOSE BUILT to ignore questions like status, access, and money in favor of standing in judgment.

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