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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

#341

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

tetha wrote: post #250
anonymous908213 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll offer a counter-anecdote and suggest this advice isn't necessarily ironclad. I've used the same pair of $20 headphones for decades (replacing them with the same model when they die), or else laptop/TV speakers. A couple of years ago I got $200 headphones included with a new phone purchase. The $200 headphones were amazing. I got to listen to all of my favorite music with a new perspective. But I still use the $2…

It's similar for me. Regarding audio, I have access to very decent headphones and also lower-grade studio monitors, as I've decided to make audio production a hobby of mine. Both of these are absolutely better than my cheaper in-ears for cycling and walking around outside. And sure, you also start to notice how different bluetooth boxes are also on a range of audio quality. And live music on a PA is a whole different…

Grado SR80x headphones are $125 (they used to be $90 for decades) and are arguably some of the best headphones ever made.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#342

Post by jasondigitized »

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."…

The Allegory of the Cave

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#343

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

stavros wrote: post #330
driverdan wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Only time I get up in that range is when I go for a huge dry aged steak and really nice single malt at a place I want to be noticed at.

I could do the same thing (and better) at home for about 1/4 that.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#344

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

xbar wrote: post #288
alwa wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if it’s a counterpoint or not, but I both know and appreciate a lot about coffee and enjoy instant or—especially—that black tarry sludge at the bottom of the gas station carafe, the sort that’s getting ever harder to find. One doesn’t diminish the other, they’re different things. Similarly consider the people who build world-class systems in their day jobs, yet spend their weekends running Doom on potato…

I agree strongly. I drink things that taste bad. No, not always. But when an option exists that I think might taste bad, I always choose it. Someone has determined that it is a worthy drink and unless I explore their thinking, I will never know whether or not I agree. Once explored, I have some data that I can use to compare with other implementations of such an horrific recipe. At once, I am a connoisseur of this aw…

I have a love for natto that disgusts all my friends... even the Japanese ones. In my defense, I only eat it with Chinese hot mustard.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#345

Post by Nicook »

cedws wrote: post #41
saxelsen wrote: post #22

I used to resonate with the word "taste" as a distinguishing factor between good and bad quality, but a comment on HN some months ago about one of the many blog posts that talks about taste really nailed it: "Taste" is just the degree to which two people value the same things. When someone is rated as having "good taste" it just means that the person rating them values a lot of the same qualities. The more I thought…

I would argue that taste is the ability to reason about one's own preferences. A person who doesn't consider themself to have a taste in music and listens casually won't really be able to reason about why they like the music they do other than "I like the band" or "I like the song." A person with taste in music is going to have listened to a larger variety, be able to speak passionately about it, and justify why they…

no, taste is ability to evaluate. You can still consume trash even if you have taste.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#346

Post by jasondigitized »

ehnto wrote: post #203
Brian_K_White wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you from the US by chance? I only ask because specifically for chocolate and coffee, I would consider the US baseline to be exceedingly average, even terrible. Even "okay" chocolate and coffee from other countries better known for food will blow it out of the water. The US does do excellent coffee, and excellent chocolate, but you have to seek it out. In a country like Italy or Australia the default, okay stuff i…

Give any child, anywhere in the world, standard Hershey's chocolate and they are going to lose their mind if it's the first time they have tasted chocolate.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#347

Post by jasondigitized »

MangoToupe wrote: post #284
ehnto wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you from the US by chance? I only ask because specifically for chocolate and coffee, I would consider the US baseline to be exceedingly average, even terrible. Even "okay" chocolate and coffee from other countries better known for food will blow it out of the water. The US does do excellent coffee, and excellent chocolate, but you have to seek it out. In a country like Italy or Australia the default, okay stuff i…

Is there any place on earth that has good coffee? Italy's coffee is horrible , even if they have quality machines to make it with. 99% of people will use "ille" or whatever that brand is, which is far worse than starbucks worst roast. Meanwhile I can wander down the street in the US and find better sourced and roasted beans than I could find anywhere in europe.

Anecdotally, Australia and Melbourne does it pretty well. And obviously there is good coffee in every American city, you just need to know where to go.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#348

Post by jasondigitized »

norome wrote: post #220
anonymous908213 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll offer a counter-anecdote and suggest this advice isn't necessarily ironclad. I've used the same pair of $20 headphones for decades (replacing them with the same model when they die), or else laptop/TV speakers. A couple of years ago I got $200 headphones included with a new phone purchase. The $200 headphones were amazing. I got to listen to all of my favorite music with a new perspective. But I still use the $2…

I think you point to the real problem: It's often not about taste or enjoyment but about using expensive things as a crutch for your feeble ego. Neatly expressed by the term "nouveau riche"

I think it's more to do with 'taste' as an indicator of social status. Not all things within the 'good taste' space or expensive. It's more about access to the secret club thinking, e.g. the secret hidden strip mall restaurant that has the best Bahn Mi.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#349

Post by jasondigitized »

jorvi wrote: post #201
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."…

Yeah, that's a horrible way to enjoy life. By your reasoning, you should subsist on protein blocks and watch paint dry for entertainment. By lowering the bar to the absolute lowest threshold, you'll classify everything as enjoyable. The pareto principle holds strong. Just put 20% of the effort in and you reap 80% of the results.

The Buddhists would say otherwise.

Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste

#350

Post by zen928 »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #141
mberning wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a distinctive style is also going to become increasingly rare in the age of LLMs. I see it with people at work already. They have no style. They learn very little. They get something to work but have no ability to discern whether it is a “good way” of doing it or simply “a way” of doing it. They have little interest in how or why things are built. I get the sense that they have little or no enjoyment or intere…

Distinctive style is actually bad. You want your code to be uniform, readers should not be unable to tell who wrote what. Otherwise you run into the danger of having parts that are peculiar and or obscure to everyone except the one who wrote them. That's if you are lucky, if you are unlucky the person who wrote them won't be able to decode them either.

I'm kind of confused by your post, as if you didn't read your parent poster at all and wanted to use the chance to write a lecture about CS101 concepts. Can you explain how your uniform code argument fits in at all with their example of introducing multiple other system components in a PR because they lacked the knowledge to add it in the correct area? Every piece of code they brought to that PR could have followed a uniform standard and still be considered a failure at understanding proper system architecture for their app, which is the discussion everyone else is actually having.
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