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- Hacker News
- As a person who doesn't do much tinkering the thing I dislike about this article is it doesn't really get across to me why the author likes tinkering so much or why I should either. Not saying that the article is bad but I was curious about the author's mindset and felt he didn't talk more about the appeal of tinkering.by KalMann
- > is it doesn't really get across to me why the author likes tinkering so much or why I should either
It's literally stated in the second paragraph: "It’s how I learn." You can learn how the things around you work by tinkering with them.
Of course, you can then ask why someone would want to learn things, or why they enjoy learning, and I honestly don't know how to explain that, but I feel like it's the sort of thing that shouldn't need to be asked.
by bakugo - I moved away from tinkering, ever since I had to juggle family, job, chores, and social contacts. I don't want to spend the little free time I have fixing broken configs. Instead of rolling my own self-build NAS / home server like I used to, I just have a Synology now. I moved back to Windows after I fcked my graphics driver on linux and didn't have enough time to fix it in a day or two.
Still, I love the tinkering spirit, and it still is a part of me, but it's not very pragmatic to implement in my life nowadays.
by Theofrastus - For many things, tinkering is a hobby. Obsidian note keeping strategy is another one I see a lot. No thanks. I'll just brain dump into files in a flat directory and use search if I ever need to. Do whatever works for you but I'm not going to take notes in a way where my ability to take notes requires maintenance.by nonethewiser
- I don't know if taste is the correct word here but I agree with the spirit of the article, especially the parts on tinkering being a form of practice. Play (in the form of enjoyable tinkering) is such a powerful motivator in learning. In saying that I've found two big limitations with this style of play-based learning:
1. It can easily devolve into meaningless tweaking (see author's point about touching dotfiles) which can still be satisfying but not very impactful. 2. It's hard to maintain motivation when something stops being fun. This is where external motivators like bosses, clients and scoreboards (e.g. Advent of Code) are actually valuable...
by jamiejquinn - I think the problem, for me, is that people turn tinkering on something INTO the hobby. People will spend years tweaking their 3d printer to have the perfect settings and have a bunch of weird plastic things attached that make it look like something from Tron but will never design and print anything useful. Same with so many things, the guy mentioned neovim and it's the same there. I am not here to judge people's hobbies but I think a lot of people have too much taste these days based on discussion on reddit. It's annoying, you can barely find a community that isn't just overly toxic about each aspect of their hobby.
Try going to any random hobby subreddit. Browse for a little while and try to not find like "The community favorite" (which is actually just the most expensive, well-marketed option) that everyone swears by and will make others feel like, if they don't have that, they don't have anything.
by chankstein38 - This has sometimes been my problem.
Most notably, for example, instead of having fun playing video games, I spent time benchmarking my hardware, making charts and graphs comparing the different hardware I owned. (There's a place for that, but I was no Anandtech!) And then I'd buy a new video card, run benchmarks for a week, and then forget to play any games.
I also spent a LOT of time making a French cleat wall in my workshop. And building a workbench. And making a mobile table for my miter saw. The tools all saw more use making the workshop than they did building the things.
On the other hand... when my spouse said "could you build a bed frame for our mastiff?" I made a beautiful, very functional, perfectly fitted bed frame with a latching gate over the course of a few hours, assembled and in use. I was ready. I had tinkered so much I was pretty good at the final pursuit. (For deeper context for those that care, we would totally let our mastiff sleep in our bed, but she kicks while she dreams. Without the fencing / gate on her personal Twin XL bed, she would just hop in the bed as soon as we fell asleep, and we'd wake up to her sitting on us or kicking us. She happily goes into her personal bed space at night when she's ready to move from sleeping somewhere else to sleeping in her bed for the night.)
by neogodless - I’d like to tinker with that font, it burns my eyes to try and read the words styled like that, maybe that’s the intent?by andy99
- i am fascinated with that effect and turned off every CSS rule on the page I could find but did not identify how you make that effectby zzzeek
- I adore the font and the vibe. Maybe age or something but I love it.by darreld
- the entire page has horizontal lines washed over it
- I imagine the intent is to simulate the look of an old CRT monitorby jLaForest
- i am the author! apologies, i will be adding a toggle to disable the scanline effectby seatedro
- Yeah I'm not finding it compelling to listen to someone's ideas about "taste" when they think that font is tasty.by kakuri
- It sent me back in time, very nostalgic. I even took a few minutes to sit and enjoy the moment and remember what it was like to explore the internet on a pixelated CRT in the 90s.
I suspect it's a generational gap.
by Syntonicles - Not gonna lie, but I liked the vibe, maybe that's what author meant by different tastes :p
- I think the author has a point, but his examples are bad. He talks about mouse sensitivity, windows manager, keyboard switches, and vscode. All those things were made to be tweaked. He's not so much exploring as he is playing with a toy the way it was intended. The stickiest learning comes from getting things wrong, and that happens when you're using things the way you're not supposed to. For example disassembling a microwave. Not the keyboard switches.
The world has become so comfy that even tweaking has been packaged and monetized by some company. That's right, I'm gatekeeping tweaking, sue me.
by bfkwlfkjf - > For example disassembling a microwave
Getting this wrong will not be a learning experience, because it will kill you. This is an incredibly dangerous thing to do and should only be done by people who already know what they're doing.
That's not just a tangential tidbit -- you don't learn well when you are completely out of your depth. You learn well when you are right at the edge of your ability and understanding. That involves risk of failure, but the failure isn't the important part, operating on the boundary is.
by feoren - > ...there are two kinds of people, those who do things only if it helps them achieve a goal, and those who do things just because. The ideal, of course, is to be a mix of both.
This is related to what Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance calls the romantic (subjective, "artistic") and the classical (objective, "scientific") understanding. He, too, points that the ideal is to enjoy both. Not because there are both useful and have their place and time, but because this is a false dichotomy to begin with and, ideally, one should refrain from defining the splitting and abandon both concepts (after all, the Zen in the title is there for a reason).
by newsuser - This is the second article I've seen on taste here. It seems to me the author's definition of "tinkering" is primarily describing hyperfocused, repetitive behaviors found in neurodivergent individuals, potentially even a complex form of stimming. I think this is unrelated to taste.
I think good taste in engineering comes down to a mix of skill and knowledge. It isn't just about how you can reach a goal, but rather about having a solid internal map of the world and an understanding of which parts of the map you are unfamiliar with. To those lacking knowledge, the map can deceptively appear much smaller. Skill allows you to effectively find your way to the places you know you can go. With knowledge and skill, taste comes naturally. Those with bad taste, I've found, are those with limited knowledge of the vast universe of tools available and/or the lack of skill needed to utilize those tools effectively.
- Some of the worse engineers I've ever interacted with had too strong of a "taste" for what they felt were right and were completely unable or unwilling to work outside of that. Developing a superiority complex because you think you have "taste" is a great way to torpedo your team.
Coding for others is not art, it does not have much meaning in of itself. Your users won't marvel at your choice of language or your usage of design patterns - they care about how the end product looks and works.
In a world like that where you have to work in a team, why you ever wear your inflexibility as a badge of pride? The ones who are the most useful are the ones who can code any way, any how, and can plugin anywhere - "taste" be damned. If you want to be a net positive on the teams you work on, stop thinking it's about you, because it's not.
by billllll - > Your users won't marvel at your choice of language or your usage of design patterns - they care about how the end product looks and works.
Yeah, but if the patch is unreadable slop, some tasteful choices that make the code more maintainable will make features and bugfixes come faster for users and number go up for the business.
by teeray - Spot on! The real difference between having great taste and just thinking you do lies in understanding the user's needs deeply. Good design isn’t just about looking pretty; it’s about nailing that value. And yeah, it’s no walk in the park!by liamcsail
- > Coding for others is not art.
It absolutely is, and I think it's what separates good from bad and junior from senior devs.
Most devs can produce an artifact that more or less works. But one that has an internal consistency others can understand and extend, one which accurately captures the problem as it exists and ways it will likely change, is much more of an art form.
A big part of that is knowing which situations are worth making a stand. Every you write code or leave feedback, your doing it for your team current and future.
by xKingfisher - 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 about it, the more that applies everywhere: Food, wine, clothes, architecture, software design, etc.
by saxelsen - Absolute aesthetic relativism is the complete opposite of "thinking about", it's giving up to the cult of modernity, an intellectual shortcut to avoid the complicated and controversial question of "I instinctively know that objective good/bad exists but what is it, to what extent can it be formalized and separated from my opinion, how does it interact with subjective qualities?".
That shortcut leads to a dead end that only contains the rotting corpse of truth and integrity.
- I agree with you. But taste is a skill that should be learned. People who have better taste can select better stuff by their skill.by melagonster
- 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.by andy99
- I actually see no difference in the two definitions unless you also slide in the idea that things are more relative and less clearly good/bad with the second. That seems to be the natural implication and the real difference, more so than the shift to "valuing."
- a distinguishing factor between good and bad quality
- the degree to which two people value the same things
If we don't also accept that implication, then its just the same thing. People thinking good things are good vs people thinking bad things are good.
by nonethewiser - I think a distinction can be made between bad taste and different tastes.
One of the greatest developers I've worked with, who I learned a lot from and respect immensely, has extremely different tastes in software from me. To the point where I wouldn't say I think he has good taste.
But, his work still has a distinct style and intention. I can tell anytime I come across libraries he had a hand in. I understand what the code is doing and why is is correct, even when I disagree with it.
And I think that is what is important. When working with more junior people, I'll ask them why they did things a certain way and will generally me be with a "well, idk" of some variant of path dependence.
I think developing that intentionality as a developer is important. Which does come with some amount of aesthetic, and I think taste is a defensible metaphor.
by xKingfisher