[HN Gopher] Amateurs obsess over tools, pros over mastery
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Amateurs obsess over tools, pros over mastery
Author : jger15
Score : 236 points
Date : 2023-07-09 18:37 UTC (4 hours ago)
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| lpl370MT3cm wrote:
| [dead]
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Which is considered important by interviewers?
| j45 wrote:
| Problem solving and approaches to it is pretty highly valued
| odiroot wrote:
| Grinding Leetcode, it seems.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Well of course every pro was an amateur once. So they would have
| gotten the right tools to practice with on the way to mastery...
| xbar wrote:
| False dichotomy and flatly wrong, on both counts. Further, my
| favorite line: "It is real alpha to ignore the allure of
| novelty."
| bullen wrote:
| Pros obsess over writing their own tools from scratch!
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| Anyone posting amateur vs pro is lost. Playing the same hype
| game.
| manmal wrote:
| > ADHD-ridden market
|
| > It is real alpha
|
| I have a hard time reading past such phrases.
|
| That put aside, I do agree with the idea that tools are a means
| to an end. Some are essential (like glasses for vision impaired,
| or a computer for a software engineer). But using tools also
| gives us skill and understanding.
|
| Author brought up guitarists - well, many world renowned
| guitarists have 100+ different guitars at home. To become a
| master, you need to learn most of the available tools, and learn
| them well. There is a lot of cross-pollination going on. You
| learn the sitar and the banjo, you learn flamenco etc and this
| will greatly influence your understanding and style.
|
| Learning purely from books might work for some people. But I
| think using good tools in the correct way is essential for many,
| in order to reach mastery. Writing is a tool. Flash cards are a
| tool. Learning in groups (or hanging out at the hacker space)
| could be called a tool.
| whstl wrote:
| _" many world renowned guitarists have 100+ different guitars
| at home. To become a master, you need to learn most of the
| available tools, and learn them well"_
|
| Most of those guitar players made their name as a guitar
| "master" using a small amount of instruments, and only started
| collecting later. It was not uncommon for songs made with a
| single guitar to have paid for all the other instruments.
|
| Sure, a lot of them continued breaking new ground after
| acquiring more instruments, but that was definitely not the
| source of the mastery, it was already there before the big
| collection started.
| atarian wrote:
| This guy is clearly a pro. He quotes Seneca and Bruce Lee.
| [deleted]
| QuadrupleA wrote:
| Amateurs post sweeping generalizations about what's right, pros
| learn the nuances.
| abnry wrote:
| Just like the good writers, who hedge and qualify their every
| statement. It's the amateurs who make the bold claims!
| chasebank wrote:
| I think people that obsess over tools want to do it the 'right'
| way. Problem is, there is no right way. Most often, people never
| get started. Diet, work, sports, etc. I've seen it a million
| times. People research to death to try to figure out what the
| right thing to do is. The act of doing is the right thing to do.
| Just eat less and exercise, don't obsess over which new fad diet
| and exercise program is best. Just pick up the keyboard and type,
| don't research the best editor and plugins for two months. Go to
| the driving range / get lessons, don't buy a new driver. I think
| the root is everyone wants the path of least resistance but there
| is no shortcut in anything.
| landgenoot wrote:
| The problem is that there is too much garbage and too much
| consumerism.
|
| Sure, go ahead and buy the cheapest rain coat you can find. You
| are going to regret it. Need a bookcase? Pick the cheapest
| Billy from IKEA. You can only put it together and take it apart
| exactly once.
|
| This has nothing to do with obsessions, but rather avoiding to
| get fucked over crapware and planned obsolescence.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| This is an Anglo-Saxon meme. There's a French proverb "Good tools
| make good workers".
| codeflo wrote:
| > The true magic lies not in the guitar itself, but in the
| virtuosity of the musician who brings it to life.
|
| Arguments like these are often used to defend unpopular
| technology choices, like (insert disliked programming language
| here). "A true master can use any tool!" And yet, I've never seen
| a professional guitar player use a cheap shitty guitar.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Robert Smith and his Woolworth's Top 20 electric guitar.
| dmbche wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n02tImce3AE
|
| If you're interested, this is pretty fascinating - he shows
| experimentaly that the guitar itself has little to do with
| tone.
|
| Other than that better made instruments could (no promises!)
| hold their tuning a little better, but you can cheaply buy
| locks or spend some money having that re-done.
|
| More than this and I have a hard explaining what a "pro" guitar
| could do to help an amateur. You get the same tones out of it,
| pedals and amps have much more impact on sound anyway.
|
| And seriously, unless you have musical training, you'll never
| hear the difference between epiphone and gibson, or squier and
| fender.
| raddan wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstrat
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Not "shitty". I presume it wasn't cheap, either. He custom
| modified it to be _exactly_ what he wanted, not to save
| money.
| anjel wrote:
| EVH Built it pre-success, when he was poor and the neck was
| bought as a binned factory second.
| Lukas_Skywalker wrote:
| > Van Halen bought the body and maple neck (which was a
| factory reject) for $130 [...]. Van Halen was able to
| purchase the factory second body at a discount price of $50
| due to a knot in the wood. The $80 neck had jumbo fret
| wire, and its truss rod was adjustable at the heel.
|
| That seems to be pretty cheap. I agree he didn't do it to
| save money though.
| Forge36 wrote:
| In which setting? The quality of a guitar has an impact on the
| output. A bad player won't be better by a good instrument.
|
| There are known examples of masters forced to use bad
| instruments to create great music.
|
| I believe this story has been on HN before
|
| https://www.entrepreneur.com/leadership/when-keith-jarrett-p...
| criddell wrote:
| Jack White was famous for using inexpensive guitars in The
| White Stripes.
|
| https://www.guitarplayer.com/gear/i-always-look-at-playing-g...
|
| Manufacturing is so good these days that even the cheapest
| guitars are pretty good. Justin Sandercoe is a well known
| guitar teacher on YouTube and he did a series where he bought
| the cheapest Amazon guitar ($60 IIRC) and went through a full
| setup with it. He and the guitar tech. were both impressed with
| how good the instrument was.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0SHE_xooyU
| Avshalom wrote:
| >Jack White was famous for using inexpensive guitars
|
| Which is pretty good evidence that generally professionals
| _don 't_ use cheap/shitty guitars. You don't usually become
| famous for doing the completely normal thing.
| whstl wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure.
|
| The current nostalgia-driven market of guitars might
| distort our views of what constitutes a "cheap" guitar, and
| also what quality really means.
|
| Lots of famous guitars had a "cheap" phase where nobody
| wanted them and they were left to rot on pawn shops before
| being rediscovered by some famous musician and becoming
| coveted again... that happened twice with the Les Paul
| (first with Clapton, then Slash), and then with the
| Jazzmaster/Jaguar/Mustang (thanks to hundreds of indie
| musicians).
|
| Also, there were plenty of famous people playing student
| models: The Gibson Les Paul Junior/Special/DoubleCut played
| by Keith Richards, Johnny Thunders, Billie Joe Armstrong,
| Leslie West. Joan Jett played the even cheaper Melody Maker
| model. Also Danelectros made of kitchen countertops were
| played by Jimmy Page, Syd Barret.
|
| Kurt Cobain had a Univox Hi Flyer era, and then a Mustang
| era. Always played cheap Japanese Stratocasters instead of
| the more expensive American ones.
|
| Almost all of those guitars above were considered
| undesirable, antiquated and hard to play sometime in
| history. Especially in the 80s era of superstrats. Now
| they're expensive because they were played by rockstars.
|
| This phenomenon still happens with almost every piece of
| gear. Josh Homme of QOTSA revealed in an AppleTV show that
| he'd play a cheap low-quality Peavey Amp an now this amp
| costs 10x what it did.
| coldtea wrote:
| Parent means he was a famous example of doing that.
|
| Not that White became famous because, or in any part due
| to, using inexpensive guitars.
|
| And he was a particular prominent example, because he
| didn't just do it, he advertised doing it as part of his
| philosophy.
|
| And he is not in any case the only example, tons of famous
| guitar players use cheap guitars, in stage and on records.
| They just casually use them, they don't make a point of it,
| unlike White.
| kerrsclyde wrote:
| Bruce Springsteen has used the same 'bitza' guitar which he
| bought in 1973 for almost the entirety of his career.
|
| [1] https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/bruce-
| spri...
| Hoasi wrote:
| He's a singer-songwriter though not a virtuoso guitarist.
| coldtea wrote:
| Which is irrelevant, and wasn't part of the original
| claim. He still made his livehood singing and playing
| guitar to tens of thousands of people at a time.
|
| Besides, virtuoso guitarists also use cheap inexensive
| guitars all the time. Some examples, out of the top of my
| mind:
|
| Prince, a big virtuoso, favorited his "Madcat", a Tele
| clone he bought for like $50 dollars.
|
| Eddie Van Halen often used cheap Teisco guitars.
|
| Mike Rutherford (the Genesis guitarist) used mucho-cheapo
| Squier Bullet guitars (Fender's cheapo line) for Generis
| 2020 live tours.
|
| Marillion's Steve Rothery also uses a Squire as one of
| his main axes.
|
| The Beatles were also known for using cheapo guitars like
| Epiphone Casinos.
| smrq wrote:
| That wasn't the position of the goalposts.
| kelnos wrote:
| I guess that doesn't really contradict the GP, though, no?
| They said "cheap, shitty guitars". Sounds like Jack White
| used cheap, but _not_ shitty*, guitars.
| criddell wrote:
| The second part of my comment argues that there are cheap
| guitars, but maybe the era of shitty guitars is over.
| whstl wrote:
| Nah, they were categorically "shitty", since they were not
| well made and a bit difficult to play.
|
| _" I've been playing the most difficult guitars to play
| all my life. But with all the changes I had to deal with--
| people I never played with before, two days of sessions in
| New York, two in L.A.--I didn't have time to monkey around
| with antique guitars in that moment."_
|
| https://blog.evhgear.com/2018/06/jack-white/
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I'm not playing guitar now, but from what I've heard, the
| knockoff Les Paul or Strat is almost as good as the real one.
|
| Plus if it's stolen you just buy another.
| raincole wrote:
| The hivemind advice is to use a cheapest tool for learning when
| you're just getting started.
|
| ...and I strongly disagree with it. I think if you are serious
| about learning, you should get a reasonably good one from day 1
| (if it doesn't hurt you financially, ofc).
|
| Shitty tools can sometimes waste a hefty amount of your time.
| Anyone who ever paint watercolor on papers that are not for
| watercolor knows what I mean. All the time you could've spent
| on... guess what, practicing.
| ambyra wrote:
| Depends on your age:) My dad lent me a beat up old car to go
| to college and I smashed it to bits over the years. I took
| very good care of my first car when I bought it with my own
| money.
|
| Regarding tech, it's good to go with the industry standard,
| learn why it's the standard, and go from there.
| TillE wrote:
| I've seen that advice about (electric) guitars too, and it's
| so wrong. A cheap shitty guitar will feel awful to play, have
| problems staying in tune, etc.
|
| If you're at all serious about it, I'd go straight for one of
| the $1000+ flagship guitars. Go to a shop, figure out what
| you like, but absolutely don't waste your money on garbage.
| vorador wrote:
| Genuine question, when did you learn to play? Even 10 years
| ago entry-level solidbody guitars where quite good, and
| they keep getting better. Things like CNC manufacturing,
| tighter tolerances etc. really improved the quality of the
| average instrument.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| I think you're basically fine with anything $500+ these
| days tbh. I say this as someone who owns multiple $1000+
| guitars. You might get incredibly marginal gains in
| playability, sound, etc, at that price, but realistically
| my $500-$1k guitars are all completely capable instruments.
| maccard wrote:
| For a beginner a $500 instrument is way overkill. An
| affinity squier, yamaha pacific, or a variety of
| epiphones are available for half of that, and are more
| than capable for beginners.
| whstl wrote:
| I agree in spirit, but the $1000 price is wrong.
|
| There are brands like Harley Benton producing amazing
| EUR200 guitars.
|
| I have one that I like as much as my two Custom Shop
| Gibsons... and it is vaaaaaastly superior to my Gibson SG
| Standard in terms of quality and playability.
|
| Also the $1000 price point is a very awkward price point,
| IMO. Not that much of a quality jump compared to $400/$500
| guitars, and proportionally not as good as more premium
| instruments starting at $1500 and up.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I think a lot of people tend to stick to the cheapest tool
| for far too long. However, starting cheap is a great idea.
| I've tried things for a few weeks that didn't stick, and was
| happy not to have spent the money.
|
| Instruments and art supplies are a good example of this: a
| $100,000 violin is a lot better for your playing than a $50
| one, and a professional miniature painter I watch on YouTube
| likes brushes that are $50-100 _each_ (over a 40 year career,
| that can easily mean 6 figure spend as those wear out).
|
| IMO once you can hear/feel the quality difference (or worse,
| spend time rectifying it), you should switch. For some
| things, that can take weeks or months, while for others it
| can take years.
| gjulianm wrote:
| In instruments, going for the absolute cheapest one is
| almost a recipe for disaster. I don't know about violins,
| but I had piano classes a decade ago and now I'm with
| clarinet classes. In both cases, the cheapest option would
| have push me away from the instrument. In pianos, the cheap
| electric ones are very crappy, usually don't have the full
| key range, the weight of the keys is non-existent, and
| sometimes even the size is wrong, not to mention the sound.
| For clarinets, you can find ones for less than 100 dollars
| on Amazon, but they sound like crap, the keyboard is fairly
| bad and they fight you when you want to make a decent
| sound. If you buy one of these, the most likely outcome is
| that learning is so hard and unrewarding that you end up
| abandoning it after a few months.
|
| Usually the best idea is to start out with the entry level
| range of established brands. I'm not up to date on pianos,
| but for clarinets that's $500 minimum. Yes, it's more
| expensive, but if you have at least a basic commitment to
| learning it's going to pay off. The other option if you
| aren't sure is getting a loaned or rental instrument, but
| please don't buy cheapo instruments because that's just
| throwing money down the toilet.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I am a pianist, by the way. My current instrument at home
| is >$50k but I play a lot. My starter instrument years
| ago was $1000, and was a great starter upright.
|
| If you're learning the piano don't get a keyboard. Just
| don't.
| bch wrote:
| I don't know if you've over qualified to the point you can't
| lose ("shitty"), or if this[0] counts. I thought Peter Buck (of
| R.E.M., most associated w Rickenbacker) might have worked w a
| Sears guitar too (he might have, but I couldn't find a
| reference), but he apparently used a Sears Silvertone amp as a
| regular piece of his gear[1]. Is buying from a Sears catalog
| good enough to qualify as "use any tool"?
|
| This is also glossing over the garbage and hand-me-down crap
| that many grow up with on their way to becoming experts.
|
| [0] https://www.guitarworld.com/features/pro-guitar-players-
| who-...
|
| [1] https://equipboard.com/pros/peter-buck
| nemo44x wrote:
| Kurt Cobain famously played cheap shitty guitars because that's
| all he could afford but also the overpowered humbucker helped
| him develop his famous tone. He wrote some famous songs with
| them. Univox Hi-flyers to be exact. He went through a ton of
| them and they were about $100 each. He even played them after
| he was wealthy.
| chaosite wrote:
| Jaco Pastorius famously played a Fender Jazz Bass from which he
| removed the frets with a butter knife, then sanded down and
| finished with marine epoxy.
|
| Then it got broken so he had it restored and kept playing it.
|
| Many touring or pub musicians play a plain old mass produced
| guitar, because if anything happens to it (for example, when
| flying) they can just pop into any music store in whatever city
| they are and get another for a reasonable price.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Was a Fender Jazz Bass a cheap instrument, or just a non-
| expensive instrument?
|
| I think there's the gap between the most overpriced gee-whiz
| prosumer device that they'll try to sell somebody with more
| money than skill, and an actual professional device.
|
| I also think there's a space far below the actual
| professional device, the space of brands that the
| professional might not even think about--stuff that exists to
| trick people who just stopped by the store or who are
| shopping for their kids.
|
| Which gap you have to worry about falling into depends on the
| type of device.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| No idea about Fender's quality range in Jaco's time
| (although to be fair, Fender was _the_ original electric
| bass and there were fewer options overall in the 70s), but
| nowadays Fender basses vary quite a bit in price /quality
| depending on what line you're getting. At the cheapest end
| you have their Squier line, and then you have MIM/MIJ (made
| in Mexico/Japan) Fender basses, and at the top of the line
| are American-made Fender basses, which have their own price
| variations. But even the most expensive Fender basses pale
| in cost compared to like, a Wal.
|
| I think what's notable about Jaco is less that it was a
| Fender and more that (the story goes) he DIY'd his
| fretboard with a butter knife. So the point of comparison
| would be between someone today, who feels like they can
| only get a good fretless tone if they go out and buy a
| fretless Wal for $10k, versus buying your own Fender for
| less than a tenth of that modifying the fretboard yourself
| --just like Jaco did.
| ce4 wrote:
| Theres examples, though. Stephen Hendry, the Snooker
| professional played with the cheap 40PS cue of his youth for a
| long time into his professional career and won championships
| with it. It broke in 2003:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2003/sep/02/snooker.clivee...
| coldtea wrote:
| > _And yet, I 've never seen a professional guitar player use a
| cheap shitty guitar._
|
| Professional guitar players use "cheap shitty guitars" all the
| time. From the Beatles to the biggest stadium bands, not to
| mention people who make it a point of pride to do so, like Jack
| White.
| peanut-walrus wrote:
| Electric guitars (and basses) are pretty simple instruments,
| there are only 3 things that affect the sound you get out of
| it: the pickups (and how they're placed), the strings you are
| using and the setup. Everything else is quality-of-life
| improvement rather than sound improvement (assuming the
| instrument is at least mostly competent and doesn't have
| frets placed incorrectly or some internal signal processing
| that destroys the sound). However, for acoustic instruments,
| you certainly get what you pay for. You really don't often
| see professional violinists or classical guitar players using
| cheap instruments, as the quality of the instrument affects
| the sound to a much higher degree.
|
| Most tools are quite similar to this, professionals know what
| they are looking for and don't need to get the most expensive
| or advanced tool, except in cases where it is absolutely
| necessary for optimal performance. They know the key things
| to look for to get the best performance out of the tool and
| the other characteristics they choose according to their
| preference or customize as needed.
| ecks4ndr0s wrote:
| Amateurs obsess over languages as well. Java vs C++. Rust vs Go.
| This vs that. etc.
| cborenstein wrote:
| Agree that jumping between tools at the expense of focusing on
| craft won't get you the results you want:
|
| > If we're fixated on acquiring every new tool that comes our
| way, we risk missing out on developing our fundamental, timeless
| skills--the abilities that transcend technological trends and
| persist throughout time
|
| But the tools we use can have a big impact on our behavior.
|
| Each tool makes some behaviors easier and others more difficult.
| By choosing tooling that aligns with your goals, you make it much
| easier to achieve those goals.
|
| I'm currently knee-deep in the notes space* so will give an
| example there. I regularly talk to people who have invested a lot
| of time in their notes / productivity tooling. Their systems
| "look" good. But more often than not, they're over-engineered and
| get in the way of their goals.
|
| When they take a step back and switch to simpler tools that align
| with their desired behaviors, they find more sustainable
| productivity and more space to hone their craft.
|
| *working on https://stashpad.com - would love to chat if you've
| had a similar experience.
| moandcompany wrote:
| On tools: "Tools" are sometimes useful for getting a job done.
|
| - "Good" tools don't get in the way of getting a job done, and
| often make tasks easier or faster to perform.
|
| - "Great" tools can enable entirely new ways of completing tasks,
| and sometimes enable completely new types of things to be
| accomplished.
|
| On amateurs vs pros and mastery:
|
| - Amateurs worry about figuring out how to get something done
| "right," (i.e. typically with one instance in mind) and often
| blame their tools for poor results.
|
| - Pros worry about figuring out how to manage the outcomes of
| jobs/tasks/etc to make sure they don't go "wrong." (e.g.
| considerations of failure modes,
| maintenance/upkeep/sustainment/etc..)
| brailsafe wrote:
| Pros can/will pay so that their time isn't wasted, but ideally
| know what to spend the money on. Anrej Karpathy hinted at this in
| his Lex interview and I agree. Tools are not the point, the point
| is to decrease the time to a quality product and the misery of
| doing so.
|
| When I was young and didn't realize I had ADHD, I thought getting
| a great chair and monitor would help me keep going longer and
| help prevent frustration leading to burnout. They did end up
| helping eventually, but only if every other environmental thing
| got out of my way, and the problem I was grinding away on was
| right.
| bennyp101 wrote:
| "Obsess" is a strong word, but keeping an eye out for tools that
| could make things easier is a no brainer. Things move at a fast
| pace and whilst the script or hammer from 10 years ago works, why
| not keep trying new things to see?
|
| I'd say the amateur is the one who mastered the hammer and thinks
| everything is a nail.
|
| Edit: rather, not realised yet that everything is not a nail
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yes, think about this when you hear the next discussion about vim
| vs emacs
| dale_glass wrote:
| It's a bit of a platitude, IMO.
|
| You can find plenty pros that obsess over tools. Like look at
| Adam Savage's Tested youtube channel, in which he makes videos
| surrounded by a vast mountain of tools, many of which he made or
| customized himself. Recently he geeked all over the fractal vise.
|
| The difference I'd say is that pros have a better understanding
| of what they need, don't expect tools to magically solve
| problems, and often customize or even make something from
| scratch.
| shrimpx wrote:
| I think there are two ways to "obsess over tools". One is to
| obsessively research and build your collection and sort of
| superficially admire your collection. Another is to bring in
| and master the tools one by one, driven by the needs of your
| process, and find meaningful places for each in your process.
| In essence, the former is cargo-culting the latter and they
| look similar from a distance.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| For me, tools capture the experience of someone else in a way
| that typically expands my own skills. They include little
| features/details that I wouldn't think of on my own. That's
| particularly true with software tools where non-obvious edge
| cases are abundant.
|
| I want tools that carry mental load for me, so I can focus on
| delivering maximum value.
| izelnakri wrote:
| I think you're 100% on point here.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| I'd say there are two different types of "obsession" here. One
| is the attitude that that you need to use the best tools
| possible and by doing that you will get a good result. The
| other type is old fashion geakery. If you look at Adam, he is
| two things: a maker, and a tool geek. These aspects certainly
| intersect, but when he is making things, you do not see him
| reach for the most sophisticated tool in his toolbox. A great
| example of this is this video [0] where he geeks outs over his
| new measurement tool: guage blocks (and corresponding guage).
| The thing is, I don't think I have ever seen him do a build
| where he uses them, because they are simply beyond what his
| work demands.
|
| I'm a similar way with programming languages. I'm a PL geek,
| and enjoy geeking out about the fine details of various
| programming languages, and pointing out flaws in langauges.
| But, at the end of the day, when it comes time to pick a
| language for a project, I typically reach for a combination of
| Java/C++/python/m4. There is nothing to geek out about those
| languages (except for how bad they are), but pragmatically
| speaking, they are typically the best tool available for very
| boring reasons.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE7dYhpI_bI
| bruckie wrote:
| > Java/C++/python/m4
|
| One of these things is not like the other. :) I'd love to
| learn why you included m4 in that list.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Because I've ended up using it in almost every project I'm
| involved in. By all rights, m4 should not be a good tool
| for anything. It has no type system, no syntax checking, no
| debugger, no namespaces, no real notion of atomic literals.
| But, it just kind of works for a bunch of situations.
| Basically any text based format you have can utilize m4 as
| a pre-processor.
|
| Typically it comes up during integration work, where I am
| dealing with various technologies from various vendors for
| various clients in a single project. M4 ends up being a
| glue language for "compiling" configuration files. Where
| possible I prefer to use a more proper templating engine
| like python mako, but those are not always a good fit.
|
| I've also used M4 as a way of implementing DSLs, which is
| great as long as you are fine with your DSL inheriting all
| of m4's problems. I've also used it to help write bindings
| and other highly repetitive files.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| M4 seems to fit that niche in between gluing strings
| together and full blown Python string templating that works
| in a surprising amount of situations. I use it a lot,
| especially when templating config files in containers.
| eropple wrote:
| Adam Savage is also _creating content_ , and you have to nod
| to the people most likely to be _consuming content_ at times.
| postmodest wrote:
| Meanwhile if you look at someone like Ken Parker (
| https://kenparkerarchtops.com/archtoppery#new-page-1 ) you
| see someone who does obsess over the best tools _and_ the
| best process.
|
| Now, admittedly, Ken Parker is a lightning rod for
| disagreement, but you can't deny that he makes a well-made
| product.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| For the uninitiated, could you please tell me more about
| him being a lightning rod for disagreement? I hadn't heard
| of him before.
| btown wrote:
| An overlap of the two obsessions: recreate something
| historical with only the tools available at the time.
|
| Clickspring's ongoing recreation of the ancient Greek
| Antikythera mechanism, starting by recreating many of the
| original tools likely used to build it historically (and
| contributing to academic research on the details of the
| system as he goes along!), is an incredible example of this
| (and altogether an amazing channel): https://www.youtube.com/
| playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0...
| galangalalgol wrote:
| As an amateur my experience is that having the exact right tool
| for a job is way better than having the very best quality of
| the almost right tool.
|
| Also for tools with consumables, the quality of the consumables
| matters way more than the tool that you put them in.
| coldtea wrote:
| I'd say an expert is the one knowing how to use a tool for
| multiple jobs, and do wonders with a minimal toolset - not
| needing "the exact right tool for each job".
| cutler wrote:
| Agreed. Pick 4 languages, 1 each for: -
| Front-end (JS) - Scritping (Python, Ruby, Perl,
| PHP) - Applications (Java, C#, Kotlin, Scala,
| Clojure) - System (C, C++, Rust)
|
| That is all you need. A true master can do a lot with the 2
| "worst" languages - JS and PHP.
| dgacmu wrote:
| Languages are turing-complete.
|
| Tools are not.
|
| Example: there are some shapes you cannot physically
| create as a single unit with a milling machine; they can
| only be created by additive deposition methods.
|
| Or more simply, while you _can_ screw in a star drive
| screw with a very improperly used hex driver, you
| probably shouldn't.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree. Eventually your garage is totally full
| of exactly the right tool for some job or other and you can't
| find anything because there's tools in the way.
|
| It applies to software too. If all of the complexity in your
| project is placing the perfect tools and configuring them
| correctly, you end up with a codebase that's 90% tool-
| specific and even coders that think they're fluent in your
| language of choice have a steep learning curve if they're
| gonna work on your project because the complexity is no
| longer in the project's alleged language, it's now in 15
| separate DSL's that they've never heard of.
|
| There's a balance to be struck here.
|
| I see this especially often in python projects with complex
| pre-commit configurations. It's like we secretly need that
| compilation step, even if our language doesn't strictly
| require it, and it just becomes a rug to hide overspecialized
| complexity under.
| eropple wrote:
| _> I 'm not sure I agree. Eventually your garage is totally
| full of exactly the right tool for some job or other and
| you can't find anything because there's tools in the way._
|
| Frequently it means _you can do the thing at all_.
|
| I will not use my snap ring pliers again this year. Or
| probably next. But I am never throwing those goddamn things
| out because trying to do tasks that require them, without
| them, is impossible. And I will not get a lot of
| forewarning when my planer decides it's time to blow a
| bearing.
|
| But they're $10 snap ring pliers from Harbor Freight, not
| $50 Knipex ones. Get the tool to do the job, worry about
| the nicest tool if you do it every day.
| comfypotato wrote:
| Having a cluttered garage and having the right tool for
| the job are completely unrelated.
|
| I'm not 100% following the discussion, though. Most
| software work can be done with vi and nothing else.
| Working with your hands, on the other hand, requires
| snap-ring-plier specific tools.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| >Also for tools with consumables, the quality of the
| consumables matters way more than the tool that you put them
| in.
|
| I fully agree. I wasted hours dealing with brad nails that
| didn't go in all the way, only to bend over when I tried to
| nail set them. Paying more for Brad nails fixed the issue
| almost entirely.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| A lot of pros also enjoy Project Farm's YouTube videos, which
| compare and rate tools from popular brands.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| This reminds me of a fascinating interview with Trey Anastasio
| (an absolute master of electric guitar tone and effects and
| loop pedals). His take was, while quality matters, you don't
| need the "best" gear -- but it's essential to really truly
| deeply know the gear you do have inside and out, so it can get
| out of the way and simply be an extension of your instrument.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _look at Adam Savage 's Tested youtube channel, in which he
| makes videos surrounded by a vast mountain of tools, many of
| which he made or customized himself._
|
| While I don't dispute Mr. Savage's acumen, I wonder what the
| number and complexity of his tools would look like if he worked
| in private, instead of the glare of internet fandom.
| photonerd wrote:
| Most of the tools in his shop he had before opening it up to
| the fandom at large.
|
| Remember: he'd been a pro at this stuff for years even before
| Mythbusters & the Tested stuff was (mostly) after that ended.
| He had 25-30 years of professional AND professionally-
| informed hpbbyist experience to build that collection
| jstummbillig wrote:
| While I do not disagree in general - things not being black or
| white is probably correct - I think in Mr Savages case you
| could argue that knowing how to geek with/over tools is the
| mastery part.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| youtube is probably not a strong argument but the recent
| fireball tools video about his welding table and jigs was
| pretty comvincing, even though it was an undisguised
| promotional work designed to convince.
|
| (He submits a basic job to 3 diffferent class of pro fabricator
| shops, and has one of his video producers do the same job with
| no help (supposedly) but with his tools, and that one is the
| only one that adhered to the specs.)
|
| I would like to see that same experiment reproduced by other
| people because if it's true I think that is a very important
| thing to know which would change how you approach things your
| whole life. You could obviously chase after awesome tools right
| now anyway, but it would be huge to know that it's proven to be
| essentially 'best practice' to do so rather than just your
| unfounded feeling that no one else, like your boss, is
| obligated to consider.
| sizzzzlerz wrote:
| Manufacturers depend on this regardless of the product. It is why
| you find weekend duffers carrying around pro-level clubs and
| tennis hackers using top-of-line rackets or amateur photographers
| carrying $3000 cameras with pro lenses. With enough practice and
| lessons, one can grow into their toys but until then, it's wasted
| money. It isn't a bad thing to buy a tool that may be for someone
| above your current skill level but that generally doesn't mean
| buying the best, most expensive option.
|
| I, myself, am in the market for an acoustic guitar. I'm fortunate
| enough that I could afford a top-level Martin or Taylor but it
| would be silly. Instead, I'm focusing more on the mid-level,
| $500-700. Something that won't fight me, not stay in tune, but a
| guitar that has enough room to grow into.
| nickpinkston wrote:
| I've found a lot of people obsess over tools to solve something
| like their personal productivity or management issues, which is
| like buying better cars to get better at driving.
|
| They'd do better to either find a driving coach, or start riding
| the train.
| mherkender wrote:
| Why not both? I've been using vim for ages and I'm very
| "masterful" with it, but at the same time I try to look for tools
| to solve unsolved problems I deal with.
|
| It's true that novelty doesn't generally deliver actual results
| but it's also my job to automate everything that can be
| automated.
| tippytippytango wrote:
| I met an incredible texture artist in a game modding community
| years back, when a typical texture size was 256x256 or maybe
| 512x522, he did everything in mspaint and it was beautiful.
| mrkeen wrote:
| But who focuses on the adage?
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| And hiring managers: over whiteboard l33tc0de
| [deleted]
| jpswade wrote:
| A bad worker blames his tools right?
| tonystride wrote:
| From a pianist perspective, when I was in college I played at a
| restaurant with an old beat up grand piano. I'd constantly
| complain about how bad it made me sound. Then one day I went to
| hear one of my mentors play on said piano. He sounded great. It
| was a pretty vivid demonstration of this principle for me.
|
| One thing though, is that this title doesn't paint the idea of
| amateurs with a great tone. Nothing wrong with being an amateur
| since it really means to do something for the love of it. I think
| pros need to be careful not to lose their amateur mentality wrt
| to the love.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| All my major successes in life have come from curiosity followed
| by perseverance.
| nlh wrote:
| I'll share a parable:
|
| When I first got into cycling as a hobby/activity, I didn't know
| anything other than "get a bike and ride it." I didn't know about
| clipless pedals or carbon wheels or gear ratios or anything. Nor
| did I particularly want to know about any of it. I just bought a
| basic, average, all-around bike and started riding it.
|
| That bike served me extremely well. It didn't do anything
| particularly great, but it also didn't do anything particularly
| badly either. It was totally average. I rode it thousands of
| miles around the Bay Area, and in the course of doing so, got
| really quite into the sport (which is now, thankfully, a major
| part of my fitness life). And in getting into the sport, I
| learned about all the widgets and gadgets and what equipment was
| better for what situations.
|
| When that bike got stolen (thanks, SF), the timing was such that
| I was ready to treat myself to a major upgrade. And so I built
| myself a dream bike. And picking out every component was SUPER
| fun, because I knew exactly what I needed and why I needed it. I
| knew I wanted an endurance-optimized frame because I enjoyed long
| rides with lots of hills. I knew I wanted smaller diameter wheels
| because it's so darn windy going over the GGB that I'd get tossed
| around with deep-dish aero wheels. I knew the gear ratios that
| would be ideal for the type of riding I enjoyed.
|
| And so I remember VERY distinctly when an old friend called me up
| one day and excitedly told me he too was ready to get into
| cycling. But oh, was he wracked with indecision, and could I
| help? Which gears to get? which frame? which brakes? Which
| indeed.
|
| He was the quintessential amateur obsessed with the tools. And I
| advised him to take the same path I'd taken: Just buy a bike.
| Ride it. Learn what you like and what you don't like, and the
| decisions for the next one will be infinitely easier. Master the
| basics and then you can focus on mastery with the right tools.
|
| BTW - this wasn't wisdom of foresight here. I lucked into the
| experience because I was truly an amateur when I started and just
| didn't care. But I think it worked out well.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| A master carpenter might be able to build a house with pointy
| shards of glass for nails, rotten wood for timber and pumice
| stones for hammers, but he's going to struggle every minute of
| the time, hate you for making him do it, probably decide to
| switch jobs half way through and the house is going to look like
| total shit (even if the only thing swapped out was the hammer
| this would likely become true).
|
| In my first job I had to deal with an absolute trash-heap of a
| proprietary programming language (Clarion, no, don't bother
| googling it, you will only find misleading marketing material and
| a bunch of people who only know Clarion, COBOL and FoxPro and
| will spend all day long telling you how Clarion is the best thing
| under the sun).
|
| Normally when dealing with a shitty tool, I will spend some time
| either replacing it or finding some way to modify it to make it
| less shitty, but in this case, there was nothing I could do but
| to master its endless quirks.
|
| I wrote anything I didn't absolutely have to write in Clarion
| secretly in other languages (usually Python) and presented it at
| the last minute when it was too late for anyone to say no to me
| doing it (yes it really is much easier to ask for forgiveness
| than permission). No, it wasn't the most sensible decision to use
| languages nobody else in the company knew to write important bits
| (although I tried to keep all my code as straightforward as
| possible), but at this point there was already another person in
| the company who had built up an empire of job security through
| utilizing obscure shit nobody else knew how to maintain (except,
| joke's on him, I knew how to maintain it!), and also I had to
| survive the experience without ripping all my hair out.
|
| Due to the frustrations of Clarion, I would often point out some
| of its major shortcomings and get told: "A bad workman blames his
| tools." To which I often replied with something along the lines
| of: "You wouldn't hand a good workman a rock and ask him to frame
| a house."
|
| Anyone with any experience and mastery will know and be quickly
| capable of noticing when a tool is trash and should be replaced
| to avoid turning 5 hours into 5 days of work. Using this
| reasoning to excuse poor tool choices is a terrible thing and
| when experienced and inexperienced people alike complain about a
| tool, it's a good idea to take a step back and consider this
| proposition seriously. In fact, in my experience, people with
| less experience are much less likely to know when a tool is shit
| and instead assume that any shortcomings are actually par for the
| course and that no better options exist.
|
| Whenever I use a tool and I find something is difficult to do, I
| try to take short break to find out if the tool I am using is
| really optimal for the work I am doing. I am pleasantly surprised
| (in programming and many other areas such as even DIY) when I
| find out that there is in fact a better tool which is a pareto
| improvement over what I am currently using. Take, for example, a
| can opener. Many people use can openers which cut down from the
| top into the tin. For years now a new type of can opener has been
| seriously failing to take the can opener market by storm (because
| not only do can openers not break that often, but they're so
| deeply standardised that nobody would recognise anything else in
| a shop if it was sold). This type of can opener cuts in from the
| side, with a much more precise blade, without creating a ragged
| edge burr, without requiring you to fish the lid out from the
| can, while creating a lid for your newly opened can. Yes I'm
| talking about the can opener from the technology connections
| video[0].
|
| In summary, don't obsess over tools, the latest over-hyped
| library/framework/language/editor/IDE will probably not make your
| life 100 times easier, but DO learn to ask yourself if the tool
| you are using is really the best. Learn to modify your tools for
| the better. Learn the important skill of telling when you're
| making your life more difficult than it could be. It will make
| your life easier, I promise.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_mLxyIXpSY
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Beginners obsess over tools, intermediates obsess over mastery,
| seniors don't obsess.
| galkk wrote:
| I heard great name about tool obsession: "tool junkie". , as I'm
| too guilty of it.
|
| I suspect that for the brain the dopamine reward for spending
| time at more or less passive researching and coming to conclusion
| that zzz is the best is faster that grinding for becoming master
| bob1029 wrote:
| I think mastery is a game of maximizing nuance/compromise and
| finding solutions in the middle. When you can take something that
| already kind of works and make it work 10% better, that is
| important. It is rare to find people who can _consistently_ add
| incremental value to the same thing over and over. Even if you
| are "good" at something doesn't mean you are able to deliver it
| in a professional setting.
|
| I've seen lack of nuance result in the most incredible
| architectures. I think the #1 offender still is: "It can _NEVER
| EVER_ go down ". This is the definition of amateur hour in my
| book. Usually results in a system that goes down far more often
| than a single node cave man approach.
|
| I'd hesitate to imply that pros aren't interested in shiny new
| tools. The primary difference is that the pros usually go get new
| tools once every few years and typically wait for market
| sentiment to shake down first. The amateurs are shopping at Home
| Depot every weekend.
|
| We are _just now_ looking at building a cloud-native stack in
| 2023. I made us wait a solid ~decade (lambda launched in 2014)
| before I was willing to go beyond the safety of our vendor-
| agnostic VM bubbles. So yeah, we are using some shiny new FaaS
| /serverless tools, but we are using them in a _really_ dumb &
| conservative way (i.e. serving old-school SSR HTML forms, etc).
|
| The tooling change is really only to serve our operational
| convenience and improve compliance/audit stance. Not because it's
| fun/new/what everyone else is doing/etc. How many developers do
| you know will go out of their way on points like those? "I picked
| this technology primarily to make our audits and compliance
| conversations easier as we scale". Who does that? This is another
| example of mastery. Paying attention to _and caring about_ all of
| the auxiliary things around the software /problem/tools.
| userbinator wrote:
| Many amateurs are easily distracted by "new and shiny", and of
| course the accompanying marketing of these tools. Pros have
| realised that most of this is really nothing more than marketing.
| lockhouse wrote:
| You must choose your tools before you can master using them, it's
| not an either or.
|
| As an amateur woodworker, I can tell you that the quality of
| tools can make all the difference in your enjoyment. You
| absolutely will notice a difference in the quality of your tools.
| Quality tools feel better in your hand, almost like an extension
| of your body. They cut cleaner and with greater accuracy. They
| are less likely to strip screws. They are less likely to break
| causing you frustration and an unwanted extra trip to the store.
|
| There is a point of vanishing returns. You definitely have to
| determine what level of quality you actually need, but Makita 18V
| cordless tools are a massive step up from their no name Walmart
| equivalents.
| JamesonNetworks wrote:
| Another of these is: amateurs focus on code, professionals focus
| on the data model.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Speaking as a pro, or so I like to think, I'm not sure what you
| mean by data model. Are you simply talking about data
| structures?
| tredre3 wrote:
| Data structures is often part of the model, but that's not
| what the "data model" is all about. It's about having a good
| overview of how everything is connected.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_model
| bradley13 wrote:
| Um...I think his point is clear? First, you understand your
| data, and decide how to represent it. Only then can you write
| code to work with that data.
|
| Poor programmers dive into methods and algorithms, and then
| try to force their data to match. Which almost never works.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Pretty much. A manager early in my career would say "get
| the data model right and the code will write itself" and
| I've found that to be mostly true.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| It wasn't clear. If he meant data structures then say data
| structures. If he meant something different or broader by
| 'data model' then I don't know what that was.
|
| I value plain, simple code and equally plain, simple
| writing. I am becoming dismayed at the trend towards fancy
| labels on basic things. A while back someone talked about
| 'affordances' in C# which sent me into a tailspin because I
| thought there was some significant area of the language I'd
| never encountered. Turns out he just meant attributes and
| methods.
| pessimizer wrote:
| "Data model" isn't a confusing term, and "data modeller"
| is a profession. They work on data models.
| SuperCuber wrote:
| "modeling your data" is terminology that I encountered
| before, not sure why you find it unusual /shrug
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| @pessimizer, @SuperCuber - So educate me. Let's base it
| on something I've actually done, a code analyser. For
| this you parse the code into an AST, and to deal with
| lexical scopes of declarations of procedures/variables
| etc. you have a stack of symbol tables.
|
| So we've got a tree (the AST), we've got a symbol table
| for the current scope (a hash table of <id, info> pairs),
| and we have a stack of symbol tables (a stack).
|
| A tree, a hash table and a stack. Those are data
| structures. What more needs to be added to this
| definition to turn it from "data structures" into a "data
| model"?
|
| Firstly this is a serious question, secondly I have a
| great deal of experience of defining data structures to
| solve problems, so I can't see what adding an abstract
| term is doing.
|
| You could say that the extra something is the
| specification/maintenance of the correct
| interrelationship between those data structures (and I'd
| agree), and there's a word for that: it's called 'code'.
| I genuinely don't understand what you're getting at and
| I'd genuinely like to know.
| ambyra wrote:
| Yes! And amateurs focus on tools, pros focus on
| execution/getting it done.
| rtuin wrote:
| Amateurs would disagree
| stephen_cagle wrote:
| I think this statement is actually much more true than the
| titles' statement (for programming).
| j45 wrote:
| Clever architecture can almost always beat clever coding,
| languages and frameworks.
| thrwawy1234 wrote:
| I really wish we had a different word than "tool" for the stuff
| we use to assemble and work with software. These sorts of
| discussions inevitably devolve into people arguing about physical
| tools as found in the arts, manufacturing, our other "crafts"
| with nothing more than vague hand waving to justify why the
| physical tool analogy even makes sense when applied to the things
| we call "tools" related to software. It's not that the word
| "tool" is inappropriate in a raw definitional sense, but it seems
| to lead to these tortured analogies. At this point as I'm pushing
| 30 professional years in the computing field, I'm less and less
| convinced that the analogy is very strong.
|
| Amateurs and dilettantes sure like to argue strongly about it
| though.
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| What's wrong with being an amateur?
| j45 wrote:
| Having a healthy mistrust of your work is good.
|
| Thinking the next tool will make a difference when your
| customers don't care what language renders the html and
| JavaScript can have it's place.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Nothing. What's wrong is choosing through arrogance not to rise
| above amateurhood.
| ourmandave wrote:
| Amateurs obsess over tools.
|
| Is that why I drop a lot of money on a new hobby, hoping the
| "investment" will keep me motivated?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Amateurs also use exclusive/expensive tools and the discussions
| about them as a ticket into the pro community. Even though what
| really ends up happening is that they end up in a community of
| wealthy amateurs, all arguing about what they know: the prices
| and feature checklists of tools.
| Nition wrote:
| When I was getting back into recording music I went looking for
| how other people have their home studios set up. I quickly found
| http://www.reddit.com/r/musicbattlestations, but people there
| often hadn't done the basics that would help the most like
| acoustic treatment, and yet had rooms full of equipment. Whenever
| someone asked to hear what they'd made it'd be "I'm working on
| something now..."
|
| At first I was confused but then I realised, their main hobby
| isn't making music, IT'S COLLECTING TOOLS.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| Numbers of instruments sold would be extremely low and as a
| result the price extremely high if only people who actually use
| them bought them.
| ip26 wrote:
| Pros can, in some cases, get to just buy the good stuff without
| having to agonize over cost. Pro sports photographers are all
| shooting the best cameras and lenses; when your income depends on
| the equipment, it can be self defeating to try to thread the
| needle of cost and performance. Just buy the $4k camera and $4k
| lens instead of experimenting with low grade stuff and risking a
| shoot.
|
| There's nuance to be sure, but at a basic level an amateur has no
| income offsetting the cost while the pro does.
| coffeepancakes wrote:
| A pro guitar player just has Gibson or Fender do a signature
| guitar so they can use their name to sell them and then get
| them for free. I wonder the last time anybody from... say...
| Metallica has actually had to buy gear. Just get it from the
| manufacturers so they can say that James Hetfield from
| Metallica uses it.
| coldtea wrote:
| Pro photographers, including sports, don't like to change gear
| much, and don't care for over-expensive "best" gear either. The
| stick to use a knocked out battered old camera they trust
| rather than rush to get any new "best" model.
|
| But they will pay for stuff that is needed for the job, like
| expensive fast and light enough teles, or multiple continuous
| frames (but up to a point).
|
| Youtube "pro photographers" do, because they get their money
| through gear reviews, peddling cameras, and sponsorship deals.
| ip26 wrote:
| Maybe they are shooting a 5D III instead of a R5, but it's a
| once-flagship, not a Rebel.
|
| Anyway, I don't want to over generalize about a profession
| I'm not in, so I'm stopping at that. The point is how the
| purchasing decisions differ when the equipment is a capital
| asset or pure cost.
| dmbche wrote:
| I wonder what portion of pros have moved to mirrorless since
| it's been intoduced? It doesn't change much for image
| quality, and it forces you to change your lens range or run
| adapters, it's quite annoying but I'm pretty sure a lot of
| people have jumped anyway.
|
| I'm biased, I'm still on a 5d mark i !
| jseliger wrote:
| I was thinking of photography because there are endless forum
| threads and debates about whether camera x is 10% better than
| camera y, and the same about lenses, when in reality, a lot of
| interchangeable lens cameras (ILCs) have been so good for so
| long that, for the majority of people and majority of
| applications, there are a ton of great choices.
|
| The phrase "gear acquisition syndrome" (GAS) gets thrown around
| a lot for good reason. A lot of people trying to shoot better
| photos and videos aren't limited by their gear.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Reminds me of when an intern told me 'php sucks'. I asked him
| 'why?'
|
| No response.
|
| Me and another senior giggled.
|
| To him, a programming language was part of his identity. To me,
| it was just another tool.
| NewEntryHN wrote:
| People making comments on the code editor you use before using
| the mouse to select text like monkeys.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| The number of times I've intervened on HN with someone for whom
| functional programming is God's answer[1] to everything and
| anything procedural suxx, it gets you down a bit.
|
| [1] used to be OO but God moved on I guess
| j45 wrote:
| Having started in functional programming before ending up in
| OO, I always noticed the web was more functional than object
| oriented and a great deal of work was expended extrapolating
| languages to the web though frameworks to often achieve such an
| effect.
| echelon wrote:
| At the end of the day, it's about solving problems with the
| budget you have. You need the appropriate discipline to allow
| for maintainability and growth, but not to over-engineer.
|
| Boring CRUD is faster and more sustainable than an abstraction
| that cannot be modified for new requirements. Or understood by
| future (perhaps misfortunate) maintainers.
|
| One day your thing will become the tech debt for your
| organization. Write in a way the custodians of the future won't
| curse your name.
|
| I've inherited systems where the original authors tried to be
| "smart": over-use of functional programming, "cute"
| abstractions, "powerful" mixins, layers of lazily-dispatched
| decorators. It's almost ways caused nothing but headache and
| pain.
| [deleted]
| drewcoo wrote:
| Amateurs don't get paid. Pros do.
|
| Sometimes pros get paid for having automated minions generate
| content.
|
| Was this short piece AI-written? There are lots of strange
| artifacts that I'd not expect from a human author. Like the
| fishing analogy with a goldfish.
| nottorp wrote:
| It didn't sound like blogspam to me, while most LLM generated
| text does.
| crywas wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20070613184827/http://yudkowsky....
| http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
| https://ranprieur.com/essays/dropout.html#HTDO
| https://unqualified-reservations.org/2008/04/open-letter-to-...
| http://localroger.com/prime-intellect/mopi1.html
| avereveard wrote:
| can you find a master woodworker with a dull scalpel?
| artyom wrote:
| It's a sterile discussion. So far all the AI tools that I've seen
| aimed at reproducing the _output_ faster, which may be correct,
| but not at contextually processing the incomplete _input_ which
| is usually a mess.
|
| When you realize that software mastery is mostly _thinking_ about
| that input, it doesn 't matter if the tool for the output is your
| own written code, an AI prompt, a Google search, or a
| StackOverflow snippet.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Both of the statements in the title are false. Programming is
| like the ultimate toybox. Getting started with a new tool can be
| like Christmas. It doesn't hurt to reward yourself every now and
| then especially when there is often a real advantage provided by
| the new tool. Obviously you can't spend all of your energy on
| that but it doesn't mean it can't be routine to try out and apply
| new things.
|
| Mastery of tools is also not a useful primary objective. In fact,
| in the modern era of software development, it's
| counterproductive. Because it will not leave you time to try any
| of the new stuff that could be a more more efficient way to make
| that particular type of software.
|
| I would say that a professional software engineering approach is
| to focus on delivering business value.
|
| That means you need to emphasize understanding the business
| problem and iterating on features that solve that. To be
| effective those things should take some precedence over other
| activities, like learning new tools or mastering old ones.
| 23B1 wrote:
| Written by "Adam Singer, Marketing executive, author of a
| Substack called Hot Takes"
|
| k.
| hiepph wrote:
| I learned this lesson: focus on mastering the language and
| understanding the fundamentals of networking instead of chasing
| new shiny web frameworks.
|
| Web frameworks come and go, but the language and network
| protocols are here to stay.
| hereonout2 wrote:
| Learning the fundamentals does pay off in the long term. I've
| not worked on web apps for a long time but this week helped
| some junior colleagues set up a web proxy to do SSL termination
| and explain there's these things called caching servers that
| can vary and probably solve a lot of their performance issues.
| I didn't know or really have to care what frameworks they are
| using.
| jmbwell wrote:
| "The best camera is the one you have with you" I have
| extrapolated to a great many tools. What matters is doing the
| work.
|
| If you have crap tools, you're going to have a hard time doing
| the work and a harder time growing your skills (although some
| adversity can be good for cultivating an appreciation of
| craftsmanship).
|
| But the better tool does not make the better craftsman. I think
| that's easy enough to understand, and not really controversial.
|
| Separately, people just like to pick a team and turn everything
| into Monday night football. Milwaukee Vs dewalt, mac Vs PC, Ford
| Vs. Chevy, Google Vs. Microsoft, on and on.
|
| Once you've worked with enough to know there are only minor
| differences at a certain level, the color of your cordless drill
| is less of a factor in the quality of your work. But that doesn't
| mean masters can't have a little fun with some toys.
| whoiscroberts wrote:
| Pros tend to deeply understand the fundamental problem that the
| tool is solving and are probably capable of either making the
| tool or deeply informing the process that resulted in the tool.
| An amateur or beginner is often looking for tools the hide those
| knowledge and skill gaps that a pro does not have. I wonder if
| Savage would have that vice if he didn't generate income by
| making videos chronicling tools. In my experience, I've witnessed
| many beginner software engineers spend far too much time hunting
| for a tool or library, I always encourage them to take a step
| back and consider if they really need that tool. Often they don't
| the tool and if they do it's sometimes a better choice to code it
| themselves.
| mcqueenjordan wrote:
| Part of mastery is selecting a good tool, or building one if it
| doesn't exist.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Tools are important. Professionals use tools they understand and
| use them deliberately to specific ends. Mastering your tools is
| an important step in mastering any craft and being able to
| evaluate new tools is an important part of that.
|
| "Tools don't matter" or "caring about tools is for amateurs" is
| plainly false and anybody who is proficient at any tool based
| skill knows this.
|
| The actual fallacy of the amateur is thinking that having the
| tool is what creates the skill, when actually _having the skill_
| is what allows you to make use of that tool effectively.
|
| Almost always having a good tool you are deeply familar with
| beats a great tool you have little understanding of. Regardless
| of that, bad tools lead to bad results, even if experience can
| reduce that effect.
| coffeepancakes wrote:
| Your comment made me think about the book _Track Changes_. It
| 's about the advent of word processors for creative writers.
| Apparently Isaac Asimov was an early adopter of the computer.
| Had one sent to his office and there were computer boxes all
| around the room while it was getting set up. He was fascinated
| by it and used it often. But he used it for short pieces like
| letters or short stories and used his typewriter for long
| pieces of fiction. I guess that's a good example of "deeply
| familiar" tools.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >anybody who is proficient at any tool based skill knows this.
|
| I've taught the guitar for a long time and I don't consider it
| wrong advice at all. Yes, if you can spend 200-300$ on a guitar
| instead of 80$ go for it, but the amount of amateurs who buy
| much more expensive instruments is _staggering_. An amateur
| does not even understand why the features of expensive
| instruments are there to begin with, and it doesn 't actually
| take much skill to make a cheap guitar sound great. Don't
| believe me, just check Youtube.
|
| We live in a culture that is extremely biased towards the
| notion that you can shortcut your way to proficiency with
| money, and this kind of article is an important corrective. A
| few years ago people were scoffing at Macron, the President of
| France, buying 300$ suits. I can't count how often I've seen
| ordinary guys spend more on a suit going to events were nobody
| could even tell the difference.
|
| Tools are _sometimes_ important, but 80-90% it 's about the
| proficiency of the wielder. And this is completely skewed
| because that kind of reality does not sell, and selling people
| more stuff is now the primary objective of a lot of televised
| sports, music what have you. As software developers too we are
| constantly being bombarded with sales pitches for tools, rather
| than encouraged to cultivate genuine skills, AI assistants
| being the best example.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >We live in a culture that is extremely biased towards the
| notion that you can shortcut your way to proficiency with
| money
|
| Exactly, that was my point. And if it isn't money it is "that
| one trick".
|
| Mastery over a tool is what actually matters and makes a
| professional. The professional understands his tools and
| knows exactly how to make them work and where the limitations
| are.
|
| I just do not think it is in any way productive to believe
| that you shouldn't care about what tools you are using.
| sfuller808 wrote:
| [dead]
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The problem with all this, is that all those takes are true
| to an extent.
|
| For instance: I may spend $80 or even $40 to get a guitar to
| start learning, but my experience across many areas tells me
| that spending those $100-200 more will buy me a guitar that
| _I won 't actively hate_. Which is important early on when
| learning something. Even more important is to avoid confusing
| tool deficiencies for lack of skill, which is easy if you
| never get to compare what you have with what is actually
| good. So basically, there is great value in not having to
| fight your tools - mechanically, cognitively, or emotionally.
|
| Another thing: tools, in general, have positive "y-intercept"
| for non-negative amount of skills. That is, even someone with
| zero experience in a field will produce better results with
| better tools. In some cases, better results than pros with no
| tools[0].
|
| Another thing still, though very close to the first case:
| while "more expensive = better" generally doesn't hold, and
| especially doesn't when the target customer base isn't known
| for their reasoning skills, it's still often enough a good
| heuristic that "more expensive = less bullshit". See also:
| "I'm too poor to buy cheap".
|
| > _A few years ago people were scoffing at Macron, the
| President of France, buying 300$ suits. I can 't count how
| often I've seen ordinary guys spend more on a suit going to
| events were nobody could even tell the difference._
|
| Maybe it's you who couldn't? In clothing, there are couple
| quality/price levels clearly apparent to the eye, though
| perhaps not if you've never worn anything at that level. And
| beyond that, the price bracket of someone's suit is something
| you'll learn indirectly, from random gossip, if you're in the
| crowd that cares. And that is the reason people spend that
| money on suits (or expensive cars) - they're in, or trying to
| break into, a peer group that _cares_ , because those
| suits/dresses/cars/whatnot are status symbols. Social signals
| difficult to falsify. Basically, the OG "Proof of Work"
| scheme.
|
| > _Tools are sometimes important, but 80-90% it 's about the
| proficiency of the wielder. And this is completely skewed
| because that kind of reality does not sell, and selling
| people more stuff is now the primary objective of a lot of
| televised sports, music what have you._
|
| OTOH, I came to believe that what you say is _also_ a fake
| reality - one of "MacGyverism". It's a ego/status trading
| reality. "A true pro doesn't need to read instructions."
| "Amateurs obsess over tools, pros obsess over mastery." "A
| bad ballerina is bothered by the hem of her skirt." Yes,
| mastery means you _can_ do the job without adequate tools.
| But it also means you 'll instead first try and get the right
| tools, because there's little point in making the process
| more difficult and risky.
|
| --
|
| [0] - Such cases are somewhat infrequent and definitely
| small-scale, because any such case represents money left on
| the table, which the market quickly captures when it spots
| it. Some examples, however, include:
|
| - Me beating handymen on a repair job, despite having no
| relevant skills, by virtue of having right tools on hand (and
| caring about the outcome).
|
| - People writing complex data processing monstrosities in
| Excel, because even if you have zero programming skills,
| Excel can get you _much_ further than you could ever get by
| asking the IT department for help.
|
| - IANAHistorian, but my high-level understanding of the
| history of warfare was that rifles, early on, were _really
| really bad_ , barely above throwing a rock at someone.
| However, they displaced archers and armored knights because
| while the latter two roles were much more lethal, they
| required many years of concentrated training - meanwhile, you
| could hand a rifle to a random peasant, tell them which end
| the bullets come out of (and how to put new ones in), and
| you'd have an effective fighter.
|
| - The elephant in the room: random Internet anon with access
| to Stable Diffusion > plenty of artists in many contexts.
| Same with anon + LLM and marketing copywriters.
|
| - EDIT: more historical examples include: reading, writing,
| numbers, basic maths (of the type kids learn by rote),
| calculators, measuring tools, precisely manufactured tools.
| All of which gave huge baseline boost to people who used
| them, regardless of their experience.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| If it isn't clear, you and the person you're replying to
| both suggested buying a guitar around $200. I think they
| were talking about all the cases of people buying a $2,000
| guitar.
| tetha wrote:
| This is something I've been told multiple times about power
| tools and tools from several people: Be ready to spend around
| $100 - $200 to get something you won't really hate. Drills,
| wrench sets, tools. Then wear that thing out, or use it long
| enough to learn why it's not enough. This in turn will teach
| you what you want from a more expensive thing.
|
| Like, I have a simple battery powered drill in that price
| range. It's wonderful to use for everything in the flat or
| putting furniture together. It also taught me what an
| expensive Makita drill could do and why I won't need it.
|
| In a similar way, I'm fully aware my bass and guitar are on
| the cheaper end of the spectrum. But hell, watching what Ola
| or Bernth or Herman Li can do on cheap pieces of crap... And
| eventually I might outgrow them and figure out what I need
| next.
| egypturnash wrote:
| The beginner must learn what tools can do in their craft.
|
| The beginner must learn how cheap is too cheap; the beginner must
| learn where the sweet spot between "affordable" and "breaks
| halfway through your first project" is.
|
| The beginner must dabble with a few specialized tools. Some of
| these can be expensive, because the market is small - there are
| simply not many people who _need_ this tool. The beginner must
| learn something of which tools truly _can_ transform the way you
| work and help you focus on the joyous parts of the craft.
|
| The beginner must also spend a ton of time mastering their craft.
| Spending half a month's rent on a Serious Tool gives it more
| power; it sits there in the corner, gathering dust, quietly
| murmuring about how much you paid for it and how little you've
| spent trying to learn how to use it.
|
| The master has accumulated quite the toolset over the journey
| from beginner to master. The master _has_ a couple of those half-
| a-month 's rent tools. Maybe they use them regularly. Maybe they
| get the bulk of their work done with the cheaper stuff. But the
| master has had multiple occasions to celebrate some milestone in
| their craft by buying a cool, rare tool. The master may have had
| the occasional gig that paid a whole year's rent and gone out and
| bought a coveted tool that cost an appreciable fraction of _that_
| payday. The master is at the point where they _need_ some of
| those more specialized tools. The master may even be at the point
| where they are making so much money with their work that they can
| pay a specialist to hand-craft a tool to their precise
| specifications, and make it a beautiful symbol of their
| dedication to their craft. Or make their own, depending on how
| their craft overlaps with what 's required to make their tools.
|
| The master may also have a few battered, well-loved tools that
| they got long ago, and still use. It still works fine, they've
| tried expensive replacements and haven't found any real
| difference, why bother?
|
| And somewhere between the beginner and the master is the
| journeyperson. They make their living with their tools. They just
| had that whole year's rent gig happen and they just splurged on
| that pricey, rare tool. And now they have a powerful signifier;
| when they take out that expensive tool, people who know a little
| about the craft will ooh and ahh, and revise their expectations
| of the journeyperson's performance upward. And perhaps revise
| their willingness to pay for it, as well.
|
| The master and the journeyperson both know that much of the magic
| is in them, not in their tools. They can do far more with a
| cheap, shitty, basic tool than a beginner would. But they also
| know when they need to take out the really specialized tools. And
| they do this work enough that they have invested in solid tools
| that sit nicely in their hands, and are balanced so as to leap
| eagerly to the task at hand. They have Opinions about their tools
| and they are happy to share them.
|
| And then there is the dilettante. The dilettante has a job that
| means a lot of those Serious Tools are in the range of an impulse
| purchase, rather than a half a month's rent. But because it was
| not bought as a sacrifice of something else, its quiet murmurs
| about how you never play with it have far less power. Perhaps
| eventually the dilettante will have accumulated enough Serious
| Tools that their combined murmurs about how much they cost will
| motivate the dilettante to blow the dust off of them and start
| playing. Perhaps not. There are many other things to spend one's
| precious time upon.
|
| The beginner and the master and the journeyperson are all
| thankful to the dilettantes of the world, for the dilettantes
| help bring down the price of the Serious Tools, both by buying
| new ones, and by letting their dusty, untouched Serious Tools go
| for a fraction of their price when they clear out their garage.
| Swizec wrote:
| Ignore the framework wars, learn:
|
| - data modeling - domain modeling - system design - managing
| complexity - syncing state - teamwork
|
| Those never go out of style.
| j45 wrote:
| So true. Design of systems inherits and overrules in the long
| run, if there is a long run for a codebase.
| Swizec wrote:
| The best frameworks are just formalizations of what worked
| for some people.
|
| The worst are formalizations of what some commitee hopes will
| work.
| j45 wrote:
| Haha.
|
| Understanding software based on it's origin story is
| definitely one overlooked aspect.
|
| Most developers could t hold themselves back for a year or
| two to see how much of a framework boils away or can be
| generalized more elegantly. It's one of the best lessons
| I've ever learned.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| It is not necessarily best to learn them in that order though.
| I think you need to model the domain before the data at the
| very least.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| I think the opposite is the case:
|
| _Give me 24 hours to fell this tree, and I will use 23 to
| sharpen my axe._
| gigel82 wrote:
| What are you going to master if you don't know your tools?
| j45 wrote:
| The things that are the same regardless of the tools like the
| fundamentals of breaking down the right problem to solve in the
| right way before seeing what the technology footprint to solve
| it might Need to look like.
| wongarsu wrote:
| An amateur obsesses over using the best web framework, a master
| can write a great website n any framework.
|
| Of course whether this is an actionable insight is an entirely
| different question. The master at least partially has this
| ability because he has tried lots of different tools. But if
| you ever phase analysis paralysis over tool choice it's worth
| remembering that in the end the choice might not matter nearly
| as much as you think.
| Fricken wrote:
| If you look at the best photographs of the 20th century, a
| great deal of them were taken with cheap point and shoot
| cameras. Then you have the legions of middle aged men with $20k
| in gear that are incapable of shooting anything other than
| trite cliches.
|
| You also have out of shape middle aged men noodling along on
| $10k bikes. It's worth it for an elite cyclist to obsess over
| their gear, every small optimization is material to them, but
| until you're pushing against the upper limits of your fitness
| the gear isn't the thing you should be losing sleep over.
| bluedino wrote:
| Reminds me of a friend who always goes overboard. $400 in
| drills and levels to hang a couple pictures in the living
| room. Doubt he's touched any of it since.
|
| He also spent $1,200 on an DAC, amp, and headphone combo,
| then bought a $150 pair so he doesn't wear the nice ones out.
| dp-hackernews wrote:
| QED: "You Need a Stronger Body, Not a Better Bike"
|
| https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/you-need-a-stronger-
| body-...
| michaelteter wrote:
| Simple binary headlines like this lead to an either-or argument,
| but as we all know it's a matter of degrees.
|
| There are indeed more powerful tools for some situations, and
| knowing those more powerful tools can mean the difference between
| success or failure or at least happiness or drudgery.
|
| I could make so many analogies, but they would be lost on people
| who don't already understand the concept. So to spare the words,
| I'll just say that sometimes it is worth fighting for a
| technology, but it is equally worth debating that technology.
| Occasionally even the proponent decides it doesn't actually
| matter for the given situation. Other times management or juniors
| (who technically are similar) can be swayed, and hopefully the
| results prove the value of that fight.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Amateurs obsess over writing blog posts. Pros over code.
|
| The blog post is not wrong. It's just a tweet-length insight
| HumanGPT-expanded.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| "Pros over code"? Was that deliberate? If so, nicely done!
|
| (For those to whom English is not a first language: "Pros" is
| one letter away from "prose", and the parent is complaining
| about people who focus on blog posts. And "over" can be taken
| as "they are writing prose in preference to writing code". It's
| a beautiful twist of language, if deliberate. If not, it's a
| very nice coincidence.)
| zabzonk wrote:
| > It is real alpha
|
| oh, please.
| mkl95 wrote:
| I dislike these generalizations. There are pros and cons to both
| approaches. Engineers who have used the same tool for a long time
| will often fail to admit there may be better tools out there to
| solve a specific problem.
| haswell wrote:
| > _We obsess over these tools, treating them like a crush--a
| fleeting infatuation that momentarily captivates our attention.
| All of this is wasted effort and delusion._
|
| Amateurs obsess over forcing binary choices. Pros over
| integrating the best of what is available into the continued
| mastery of their trade (I actually really dislike this kind of
| generalization/framing, so my tongue is planted firmly in cheek
| here).
|
| I think there is some truth in the general message of the post,
| and agree that complete fixation on tooling is a sign of a lack
| of focus on what matters.
|
| But I'm curious how the author believes the "tried and true"
| gained that designation, if not by trying things that don't work
| and returning to the things that consistently do.
|
| There's a different failure mode involved in a complete
| dedication to sticking to the tried & true: blindness to the
| moments when real step changes occur resulting in something that
| is truly better than what came before.
|
| I'd argue that a pro does spend time obsessing over tools, but is
| differentiated from an amateur by knowing when to stop. I'd also
| argue that framing these behaviors as things characteristic of
| "amateurs" and "pros" is not useful.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > I'd argue that a pro does spend time obsessing over tools,
| but is differentiated from an amateur by knowing when to stop.
|
| Well put. A more general statement (but less catchy) would be
| that "pros" navigate the search space more efficiently when
| evaluating tools.
|
| I've noticed with myself that I prefer fewer tools now, and
| value maturity a lot more. When I was younger, I thought tool
| makers were near-perfect, and the few imperfections would have
| no impact on lowly me. Then I realized that tool makers are
| just regular people and that their tools are often poorly made,
| or too blunt, or too specific.
|
| Now I know tools come with pain, so "looks nice" or "cool" is
| no longer good enough. Instead, the tool needs to be more
| useful than the pain it causes.
| leidenfrost wrote:
| I like that specific loment of learning when you are using your
| usual tool but at one point you ask yourself "is this tool
| really neccesary? I think I'm using it because habit more than
| real utility"
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