[HN Gopher] If you don't tinker, you don't have taste
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If you don't tinker, you don't have taste
Author : jxmorris12
Score : 31 points
Date : 2025-10-28 21:31 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (seated.ro)
(TXT) w3m dump (seated.ro)
| constantcrying wrote:
| I despise the word "taste" for preferring specific software and
| workflows. Why are you selecting for aesthetic experience over
| usefulness?
|
| I do get satisfaction from the results of my work, not through
| the mechanical process of arriving there. Tools are useful or not
| and this is the category by which I decide to use them or not.
| supportengineer wrote:
| Not only that but a tool is only useful in a specific _context_
| waynesonfire wrote:
| Good for you, some people enjoy the journey.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Can the aesthetic experience improve usefulness? A million
| years ago I had an MP3 player with all of my mp3s on it. I
| listened to it every now and then. But when the iPod came out,
| and I put my same MP3 library on there, I listened to it all
| the time because it was super nice to use and interact with
| paulcole wrote:
| > Have you ever spent hours tweaking the mouse sensitivity in
| your favorite FPS game?
|
| Ah yes, the true shibboleth of taste-havers.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Maybe tinkering is a necessary but insufficient condition for
| taste
| andy99 wrote:
| 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?
| jasonthorsness wrote:
| the entire page has horizontal lines washed over it
| jLaForest wrote:
| I imagine the intent is to simulate the look of an old CRT
| monitor
| zzzeek wrote:
| 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
| effect
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| The irony of an article about taste displaying little of it.
| scuff3d wrote:
| Funny part is he points out at the end that it's highly
| subjective...
|
| I actually really liked the look of the blog. It gave me a
| retro vibe, which is obviously what he was going for. But I'm
| also reading on my phone. Maybe the choice was more annoying on
| a larger screen.
| killerstorm wrote:
| I don't think "taste" in UI-adjacent things is important.
|
| Tinkering habit is kind of important as even small interactions
| help to build an internal model of how things work, how to
| operate them, etc. And this model might generalize.
| ambicapter wrote:
| If anyone's wondering, author makes no attempt to demonstrate the
| veracity of the title, he just talks about being a tinkerer and
| why it's important to have taste nowadays, and lets the reader
| make the connection.
| johnfn wrote:
| Ah yes, time for the daily article of the form "If you don't do
| <thing I frequently do>, you aren't <a good person>"
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| What exactly does "taste" mean in this context? Taste is about
| artistic quality. Aesthetics is _generally_ a tertiary concern
| when it comes to software or hardware tinkering. That assumes it
| 's a concern at all.
|
| And while I'm talking about artistic quality on HN, I have to
| take some obligatory potshots at the website in question. When I
| have to use Safari's reader mode to see what you wrote, something
| has gone terribly wrong.
| saxelsen wrote:
| 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.
| andy99 wrote:
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I used to tinker with fonts, colors, etc but as I've gotten older
| I just accept the defaults in most things. You can waste any
| number of hours on that stuff and in the end it makes very little
| difference.
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