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No Skill. No Taste

blog.kinglycrow.com

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Re: No Skill. No Taste

#91

Post by altmanaltman »

James_K wrote: post #39
altmanaltman wrote: post #9

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…

Skill is your ability to achieve your objectives, taste is the ability to differentiate good from bad objectives.

Okay but how does taste let you do that? I get what skill means but what is it that lets you differentiate between good and bad objectively? Is it experience? exposure? or just having good design skills? The article would be better if it went into the crux of this issue instead of hand waving it over.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#92

Post by PaulHoule »

I get exhausted very quickly reading stuff about AI by people who think there is some secret language of prompts or some better model or better framework which will make them successful at developing things.

I'm left with the same feeling I have when I read blogs by celebrity managers and developers like DHH or Spolsky or Graham or Atwood or Yegge, they talk as if you could learn something transferable from their experiences except... you can't. Their opinions about spaces or tabs or whether you should use static or dynamic languages are as good as anybody else's but not better!

The difference is that those guys actually made something and sold it, whereas the vibe coder almost made something.

People who make something significant with AI are going to do it because of all the others skills and attributes they have: good taste, domain knowledge, modeling, knowing what good code looks like, knowing what good user interfaces feel like, etc.

That's why I am not doomscrolling X to see what celebrity vibe coders say they are doing right now.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#93

Post by pu_pe »

Ironic that you complain about people posting a to-do app because it's so common, and proceed to post the 100th AI rant of the day with absolutely no original thought in it.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#94

Post by altmanaltman »

embedding-shape wrote: post #21
altmanaltman wrote: post #9

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…

"Others like it" could be one definition. "I like it" can be another. Personally, it kind of differs depending on what I'm doing, what exactly it means.

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 differentiators.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#95

Post by PaulHoule »

What I hated most about the NFT culture was being approached by people who wanted me to make NFTs out of my photographs and visual art.

At the time I was very much craving feedback and validation but I wanted honest validation, I knew some of what I was making was really good and some of what I was making was crap -- I wanted validation from people who could tell the difference, not from people for whom it was all the same.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#96

Post by amarant »

"The only problem is, no one needs their dream application"

I vibe coded my dream application, and I use it. I wouldn't really say I _need_ a pixel art editor for Android, but I sure do like it!

Do I really need more than that? Am I not allowed to create my dream app, for me? Nobody needs my pixel art either, honestly I kinda suck at drawing, but I enjoy doing it!

Op needs to get off their high horse and stop shiting on people for making things. Go make something and stop whining

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#97

Post by fluoridation »

vunderba wrote: post #87
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. If I spend twenty years subsisting solely on a high sodium cup-of-noodle diet, get severely impaired under the influence of everclear while trying to use a straight edge razor for the first time, hang up a white canvas, and spin around like a whirling dervish yard sprinkler and then display this finished piece next to Jan van Eyck’s The Last Judgement - we’ve long since left the realm of pure s…

>I'm being silly but I've always thought that the "taste is subjective" argument is not very compelling. Taste, if not entirely objective, at least can be measured in demographic thermoclines.

Okay, but so what? "Taste is subjective" is meant to defend the existence of some thing. "Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it shouldn't exist (or shouldn't be the way it is)." Are you therefore saying the opposite? "Because most people don't like it, it shouldn't exist"?

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#99

Post by SoftTalker »

PaulHoule wrote: post #92

I get exhausted very quickly reading stuff about AI by people who think there is some secret language of prompts or some better model or better framework which will make them successful at developing things. I'm left with the same feeling I have when I read blogs by celebrity managers and developers like DHH or Spolsky or Graham or Atwood or Yegge, they talk as if you could learn something transferable from their exp…

By that logic why is anyone here on HN? What good is reading about anyone else's experiences, they are as good as anyone else's but not better.

I still tend to go by the advice I read when I was just out of school: If you want to be successful, find someone who is successful, and do what they do.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#100

Post by scoofy »

I suspect that in the future, apps will be like these blogs: most people will have them. The app authors will they they are great, most won't be great. Some will be great and hugely popular, many will be great but nobody will know or about them, because the attention economy is always hard.

I think that's fine.

What I really think is that most of the logical folks here think we ought to be focusing our attention and organizing to maximize the efficiency of app making, and that vibe-coding really blows that up, because there is no way to know what is quality and what is trash without actually having to do the work and figure that out. That does suck, but it's why creators should have blogs, github/bitbucket accounts, etc, to offer up their credibility to facilitate bona fides.

I think the programming industry is going to become a lot more like the indie game industry, where loose networks based on mutual respect start forming and critics review the newest apps, because you really don't want to waste a bunch actually using all the stuff.

It's inefficient, but that's life.

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