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The Worst

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Re: The Worst

#31

Post by npsimons »

First and foremost, I'd like to point out that the "The Best" article seemed to be roundly attacked here on HN, with critics and defenders alike chiming in; that might be a better indicator of why it stayed on the front page for so long.

Second, I'd like to point out that this article seems to be completely missing some of the points made, namely, when you invest in good tools you can rely on, you stop thinking about them because they just work, and you are therefore liberated to worry about more important things. Sure, you shouldn't let the things you own end up owning you, but if you have ever had something you rely on fail (and if you are working in technology, you have), you can appreciate doing research to make sure it doesn't happen again. Is this a waste of time? No. Is it stupid? No. Can it be taken too far? Yes. But it can also be taken too far in the other direction. The unexamined life isn't worth living.

BTW, partisans of the worst wouldn't get metal cutlery, they'd buy plastic and throw it out when they were done, thereby creating waste and showing how actually thinking about what you buy and whether it will last or not is a good idea.

Re: The Worst

#32

Post by chetan51 »

rthomas6 wrote: post #27

Could it be possible that there is a spectrum of choices which represent a trade-off between cost and quality? What if both authors took an already understood and practiced idea in our culture and took it to an absurd extreme? Every person will desire different quality for different items. Even Dustin Curtis doesn't get "the best" of all of his items. He says that he does, but if you keep reading, what he really mean…

This. Both articles seemed extreme to me, and then again, only the extreme will really make it to the front page. If you rewrote this comment in a blog post and titled it "The Middle-Point", it wouldn't make front page, because it's just plain obvious.

Buy what fits at the right point in the spectrum for you, and move on with your life.

Re: The Worst

#33

Post by debacle »

diminish wrote: post #24
awakeasleep wrote: post #20

The dichotomy between Moxie and Dustin's posts illustrates an interesting split in the 'hacker' world. Wheras Hacker and Startup seemed to represent the use of unconventional tools to achieve a unexpected results (often) in unpleasant or tedious circumstances, those connotations have become mixed with the sense glamor usually reserved for celebrities. Now, the ostensibly boring (or at least detail-ridden, interesting…

In those 2 articles, I see more a contradiction between design and function. In recent years, design for web sites, and mobile apps has been a major focus for startups and consumers. Simple functional products are seen with more skepticism from investors; that is the journey from Google to Pinterest or from Dell to Apple.

Not unexpected - as the technical cost for implementations of most ideas approaches the market minimum, it's only logical that the sell, the approach, and the design are the key factors in determining success.

Re: The Worst

#34

Post by npsimons »

njr123 wrote: post #17
Breefield wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the author was suggesting that maybe flatware isn't worth that much. There being a bunch of expensive flatware in existence is just a straw man's rebuttal to the point that affordable flatware works just fine.

I think cutlery is probably the worst possible example to illustrate the argument. The cheapest cutlery you can buy is still works 90% as well as the best, and they last approximately forever. I've never in my life been eating something and noticed the quality of the cutlery. I think a better example would be dress shoes. The cheap versions are uncomfortable and wear out all the time, where as a good pair of leather…

Precisely. I know it's fiction, but Terry Pratchett sums it up nicely in "Men at Arms":

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

Re: The Worst

#36

Post by debacle »

pooriaazimi wrote: post #15
kryptiskt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you include the time he spent researching flatware in the bill it would be probably hard to find anything more expensive south of diamond-encrusted things for oligarchs without taste.

And he spends an hour or so every day eating stuff with those. Every single day (presumably). If you divide the $500 those flatwares have cost him over that time period (a few thousand days, an hour each day), it turns out it's cost him about 10 cents per hour . And yet, he (again, presumably) has been enjoying it immensely. If you can be happier by spending 10 cents ( per hour ), why not? I'm not a fan of expensive…

It costs me less than ten cents per hour to power my entire house.

You can do anything with simple math and look like an economist, but the reality is that the guy bought a $10 fork.

Re: The Worst

#37

Post by nyargh »

I loved this. I admit I did not read Dustin's article, but it sounds like it could have been any one of thousands of fawning techno-fetishist blog posts made over the years.

I think an interesting thing that Moxie touches on tangentially, is that life does not go as planned; things break. Everything breaks, in fact. Learning to recover from failure is often more important (and personally rewarding) than learning to use the tool in the first place. You may choose to get better tools, but given time and use, these too will eventually fail.

Operating with the understanding that everything fails, allows us to be more flexible and pragmatic in our decisions and planning. Assuming that something will never fail only ensures that a disaster will eventually happen, and that you will be unequipped to handle it.

Re: The Worst

#38

Post by m0nastic »

If forced to decide between Dustin's reality and Moxie's, I think I'd chose Dustin's. A world made up of overly-reviewed, pretentious gadgets slightly edges out a utilitarian, post-apocalyptic, hellscape Bartertown where people scavenge through wreckage looking for makeshift utensils and clothing. I picture oil drum fires.

Thankfully, I am not limited by those choices. I can continue to do what I already do, which is decide the level of attention that things require of me, optimize the ones I choose to, and not spend inordinate amounts of time fretting about the others.

Re: The Worst

#39

Post by ssharp »

Sumaso wrote: post #30
ssharp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're just hitting on a case where cheaper stuff is substantially less useful than more expensive stuff. One of the issues with "The Best" was how poor of an example flatware is at doing that. Also, cost and utility are a sliding scale. There isn't "the best" and "the worst" and nothing in between. In fact, it's usually the stuff in the middle that makes the best trade offs between cost and functionality.

I thought the point of the article was that regardless of the cost of the item, you should try and get the best object you could possibly get. I find it amusing that the article actually attacked the cost of the object not the utility. There seemed to be some sort of fear of the money lost if that object failed them. Moxie seems to think that if he spent 50 dollars on a single set of utensils he would be seemingly en…

Thee "best" and "worst" are subjective. You need to define criteria for what makes something the best. In Dustin's case maybe it was the total blend of style and function. But for many people, that isn't what makes it the best. The best may be the one that has intricate designs and costs a huge amount of money to manufacture. The rarity, design, and expense makes it the best.

Re: The Worst

#40

Post by MattRogish »

"Any reasonable person wouldn’t feel liberated by a $50 fork, but constrained by it. One wouldn’t be able to help but worry: is it being cared for correctly, is my friend going to mess it up when absentmindedly tapping the table with it, is it going to get dropped or stepped on if a dance party erupts in the kitchen? After all, it is the perfect fork, what if something happened to it to make it… not perfect?"

This is why, whenever I get something new and "perfect", I damage it in some slight way (nothing that hurts the functionality or will ultimately destroy the product). Every car I've owned gets a nick in the paint to remind me that it's just a "thing" and not to take it too seriously.

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