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Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

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Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#321

Post by iLemming »

Johanx64 wrote: post #226
submeta wrote: post #216

Tinkering is the ultimate satisfaction of a hacker. When you love perfecting your tools, shaping your terminal, your Emacs, your Neovim, or whatever tool you use, exactly the way you want it. You spend hours doing it and feel enormous satisfaction from every small improvement. That is exactly what a Japanese swordsmith, a chef, or a craftsman does. Perfecting their work, finding joy in refinement, and taking pride in…

This is not what a Japanese swordsmith or any craftman does, they obsess over the end result, polishing it until it reaches perfection. Riced out Neovim/emacs setup doesn't and hasn't ever led to quality software in any shape or form, neither it ever will. If it did, world would be full of polished, high quality software, what instead we have is endless sea of garbage produced by these cough , cough "craftsmen" - tha…

> Riced out Neovim/emacs setup doesn't and hasn't ever led to quality software in any shape or form, neither it ever will.

Hmm... excuse me?

Linux kernel - most contributors use vim/emacs extensively, with some deep customizations.

Git - Linus developed it in his own heavily customized Emacs fork

Rust - Core team members use various customized setups

Postres - core devs use vim/emacs

Kubernetes - vim/emacs

What the fuck are you even talking about? Majority of high quality shit we use today - probably 90% of all C - from networking stacks - nginx, HAPoxy, OpenSSL, drivers; to compilers and languages; databases; web infra; cryptography; build systems, basically everything written before ~2010 that's still critical infrastructure was likely built by developers in vim/emacs.

All that stuff was developed by those craftsmen you're so dismissively mocking. Do you think they never customized their environments? Spending weeks perfecting configs instead of shipping is a discipline problem, not a tool problem.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#322

Post by r0b05 »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #127
stavros wrote: post #74

Decades ago, an old friend told me "I became a coffee expert, I learned everything there is to learn about beans, the ways to prepare them, the chemistry that goes into it, and now I can only enjoy a cup of coffee prepared by the most expensive machines from the most expensive beans. The shit part is that I enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed my shitty supermarket coffee back when I didn't know anything about coffee."…

I never enjoyed shitty coffee. I never enjoyed shitty chocolate or chocolate flavored things like cakes. Until I was 30-something I thought I just didn't like coffee or chocolate. Then one day I had actually proper coffee, and I discovered that good coffee isn't just some imperceptably theoretically better version of regular coffee that snobs are basically just faking being sophisticated for show. They are two entire…

Could you point me in the direction of some actual chocolate please

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#324

Post by CharlieDigital »

sbarre wrote: post #302
CharlieDigital wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I put many of these into GH anyways because who knows when someone else might find it useful. https://github.com/CharlieDigital?tab=repositories

Thanks for this, it's very timely for me: https://typescript-is-like-csharp.chrlschn.dev/ :-)

Which direction are you headed? C# -> TS? Or vice versa?

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#325

Post by ElevenLathe »

chrisweekly wrote: post #33
andy99 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understood “taste” here to mean opinions. It’s not “good taste” it’s just “some taste”. IMO there are many ways to express taste that are not tinkering, such as preferentially selecting things and my personal favourite, complaining :) Nevertheless I think he means opinions rather than some universally good taste.

Haha, "complaining" reminded me of someth that made me laugh a few years back, along the lines of: Things I HATE: 1. complaints 2. lists 3. strong opinions 4. hypocrisy

Always loved this Michael Caine line from the third Austin Powers movie: "There's two things I can't stand in this world: people who are intolerant of other peoples' cultures, and the Dutch."

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#326

Post by znpy »

stavros wrote: post #74

Decades ago, an old friend told me "I became a coffee expert, I learned everything there is to learn about beans, the ways to prepare them, the chemistry that goes into it, and now I can only enjoy a cup of coffee prepared by the most expensive machines from the most expensive beans. The shit part is that I enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed my shitty supermarket coffee back when I didn't know anything about coffee."…

Yup. A few years a go a friend of mine made me notice my cheap third-hand thinkpad t440 had screen tearing issues i had never noticed. I couldn't unsee them after that.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#327

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #127
stavros wrote: post #74

Decades ago, an old friend told me "I became a coffee expert, I learned everything there is to learn about beans, the ways to prepare them, the chemistry that goes into it, and now I can only enjoy a cup of coffee prepared by the most expensive machines from the most expensive beans. The shit part is that I enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed my shitty supermarket coffee back when I didn't know anything about coffee."…

I never enjoyed shitty coffee. I never enjoyed shitty chocolate or chocolate flavored things like cakes. Until I was 30-something I thought I just didn't like coffee or chocolate. Then one day I had actually proper coffee, and I discovered that good coffee isn't just some imperceptably theoretically better version of regular coffee that snobs are basically just faking being sophisticated for show. They are two entire…

You should try a high quality cigarette!

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#328

Post by driverdan »

stavros wrote: post #74

Decades ago, an old friend told me "I became a coffee expert, I learned everything there is to learn about beans, the ways to prepare them, the chemistry that goes into it, and now I can only enjoy a cup of coffee prepared by the most expensive machines from the most expensive beans. The shit part is that I enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed my shitty supermarket coffee back when I didn't know anything about coffee."…

It sounds like you're choosing to live in ignorance and lead a mediocre life. That's your choice to make but to me that seems sad. Expanding experiences beyond mediocrity is what makes life interesting.

You don't need to have full knowledge or the best, most expensive thing to rise above. The 80/20 rule applies.

You can spend thousands on coffee equipment and hundreds of hours in understanding it. Or you can spend $15 on a pour over cone, $15 on a bag of beans, and $20 on a hand grinder to get 80% of the way there. The coffee you make with this minor investment will be night and day better than the swill you make with cheap grocery store beans and a cheap auto drip brewer.

Strive to be better than average rather than the best.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#329

Post by deadbabe »

wiseowise wrote: post #308
p00dles wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

novice -> informed -> asshole I strive to be at the informed part of the spectrum. Wine example: - Novice: "I'd like any red wine" -> waiter brings you something you don't like - Informed: "I'd like a red wine that is dry, not st" -> waiter brings you something you are quite likely to like - Asshole: "Do you have an Argentinian malbec from 1998-2000, from the so and so valley?" -> you spend a lot of money and like th…

> - Asshole: "Do you have an Argentinian malbec from 1998-2000, from the so and so valley?" -> you spend a lot of money and like the wine, or you are unhappy because they don't meet your asshole preferences So asshole is having preferences that don't fit the norm? If they don't impose their standards on you, and do not act a snob, why do you care?

In general, you should avoid putting people in positions where they have to admit their inadequacy to fulfill your preferences.

A better question is to first ask what they have, and see if there is reasonable expectation they can fulfill something so exact.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#330

Post by stavros »

driverdan wrote: post #328
stavros wrote: post #74

Decades ago, an old friend told me "I became a coffee expert, I learned everything there is to learn about beans, the ways to prepare them, the chemistry that goes into it, and now I can only enjoy a cup of coffee prepared by the most expensive machines from the most expensive beans. The shit part is that I enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed my shitty supermarket coffee back when I didn't know anything about coffee."…

It sounds like you're choosing to live in ignorance and lead a mediocre life. That's your choice to make but to me that seems sad. Expanding experiences beyond mediocrity is what makes life interesting. You don't need to have full knowledge or the best, most expensive thing to rise above. The 80/20 rule applies. You can spend thousands on coffee equipment and hundreds of hours in understanding it. Or you can spend $1…

I regularly spend $200 at restaurants. I know what good food is. I still enjoy it as much as I enjoyed a $3 gyros ten years ago.

You do you.

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