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No Skill. No Taste

blog.kinglycrow.com

61–70 of 222 posts

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#61

Hmmmm, where on the taste scale would you put making text unreadable when selected?

Mmmm I can see the text just fine when selecting it, I realize this is subjective to me though and an accessibility thing I likely missed, I'll look into a better color scheme for that on the blog, sorry for the trouble.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#62

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.

From my point of view, if I wanted an AI summary of a project I could generate one myself. An unlabeled AI readme is almost worse than nothing! I've generated AI readmes myself- they can be useful- but they aren't something to show off.

I'll read a badly-formatted readme written by a human with far more interest than a formulaic LLM summary of a project. But it seems like nobody even notices a readme is slop because it has nice Markdown, and my best guess as to why is that people have become habituated to this stuff.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#63
Lol last night, on a forked and accessible version of Termux I vibecoded into existence, on an Emacs and Emacspeak vibejiggered to work on Termux, I vibecoded, with gptel-agent, an Emacspeak package to make it speak when tool calls are being asked for by the model, and automatically speak any explanatory text after all the tools are called and edits are made. All on my phone with a Bluetooth keyboard. It's so easy, even a blind man can do it! :)

And because it's all controlled by me, I can tell it how to have the package speak, what it should ignore, and I'm not stuck with whatever some sighted person at some big company thinks a blind person wants. Everything should at most be open source, and at least be hackable.

All that to say, AI has helped me out a ton. Now I can be as productive as Emacs, and a Linux terminal, and maybe one day a Linux GUI with real Firefox and such, allows. And it would have *never* happened without AI.

So let's please do continue bringing on the AI. Make it smart and local, so I can have continuous AI descriptions right on my phone, with the ability to screen share or even agent-control my phone to get around inaccessible apps. Oh and fix AI app accessibility so the app sends output to screen readers when I type to it cause I hate talking to my phone and not every blind person wants to speak all the time. Ugh I hate that stereotype.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taste is not something you can define as factotum it changes over time, over location and culture.

It's kind of useless if it can't be defined. Let's say I'm a software developer, and my product is criticized for "lacking taste." What can I possibly do to correct this, if we can't even agree on a definition? Let alone agree on what actions can be taken to "add taste" to the product.

If you don't have any taste, you could work with someone who does have taste to do the interface design. Or you could copy popular patterns and designs, but that might lead to a worse experience if you copy the wrong things, or try to bend your project to fit a popular design that doesn't quite fit.

If you like it the way it is, then guess what, you do have taste, tell them to fuck off and just keep it the way it is.

The difficult part is being honest with yourself about why you like it the way it is. If you do honestly like it for what it is, then others probably will too, no one is really that unique. If you like it because you put a lot of effort into it, then you're just letting your emotions lie to you.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#66

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…

That's awesome! I love that energy, it's the opposite of the energy I was trying to talk about in the post actually, you're not trying to tell me why your app is the best thing in the world and spamming it everywhere when it has nothing to offer me or other people, and having not considered other people.

Why don’t you tell them that they have no taste?

Seems to be what the essay implies.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#67
post #53

Most of this mythical "taste", at least as hinted by the article, can be acquired rather easily—by looking into what's already out there before jumping to creating. Is there nothing? Great, go ahead and fill the void. Is there so much that it becomes overwhelming to even look? If so, ask yourself: does your thing have any significant differentiators? Are you willing to maintain it? Do you want the people who come aft…

> does your thing have any significant differentiators?

When I see a Show HN around a very popular product concept (like a habit tracker), the first thing I search for is a FAQ or comparison table against other similar apps.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#68

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…

I can’t actually get to the article on the WiFi network I’m on but when I see “No skill. No taste.” you don’t sound like the butt of that punchline. Clearly you at least have skill, and I’m in no position to judge your taste.

The people I have a problem with are the ones who have neither but nonetheless find their ways into positions of power and influence where they proceed to make everyone else’s lives varying degrees of miserable.

OTOH I have huge respect for anyone who makes their thing for their own satisfaction.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#69

Kind of meaningless if you let "taste" be a vaguely-defined term. Like, what do you mean by "taste"? How is it a differentiator? Does Apple have taste? Is the reason one open source app is better than the other because the devs of the first one have more "taste"? Seems like a philosophical article, but rather than exploring it deeply, it kind of just abandons it at the "hey man, everyone can create apps, so you bette…

It's purposefully undefined because it's a social concept, not an engineering one. And it's also subjective. You can tell because they use OpenClaw as an example of a tasteful project. I would put OpenClaw in the same category as memecoins in terms of taste. Obviously crypto can be way more harmful, but in terms of taste both are on the "internet meme" category, as helpful as OpenClaw can be.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's awesome! I love that energy, it's the opposite of the energy I was trying to talk about in the post actually, you're not trying to tell me why your app is the best thing in the world and spamming it everywhere when it has nothing to offer me or other people, and having not considered other people.

Why don’t you tell them that they have no taste? Seems to be what the essay implies.

Because right now they are actually being tasteful?
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