[HN Gopher] Taste vs. Skills
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Taste vs. Skills
Author : itypedformiles
Score : 43 points
Date : 2022-11-03 10:19 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (refactoring.fm)
(TXT) w3m dump (refactoring.fm)
| angarg12 wrote:
| > Taste is knowing what is good -- being able to recognize it.
|
| > Skill is the ability to build -- to do what's needed to do the
| work.
|
| > Taste and skill are totally independent.
|
| This is the crux of the article, and I'm not sure what to make of
| it. Some people have argued the opposite as well.
|
| When the whole argument rests on a big assumption, I'd expect
| some data to back it up. If I don't agree with the premise, the
| argument falls apart.
| avg_dev wrote:
| I just flat out disagree with
|
| > Taste and skill are totally independent.
|
| As my facility with code has grown, so has my sense of taste. I
| see beauty in code much more clearly than early in my journey.
| This is true of other things in my life as well.
| mark_undoio wrote:
| I agree with you. Skill helps you appreciate what is good
| taste.
|
| _Both_ come with experience and a willingness to learn.
|
| I'm not keen on the idea of taste as simply some innate
| quality, rather than something learned / taught. Thinking of
| it as some X factor makes it easier to write off people who
| just disagree or lack experience.
|
| That said, I've totally seen code with poor taste and I've
| written it myself, so I believe in the underlying concept.
| cestith wrote:
| I'm not sure if I would accept the premise, but if we start
| from it I think the rest of the article makes some self-
| consistent sense.
| zwkrt wrote:
| You bring up a good point. I really don't know anyone in my
| personal/work life who I think has great taste but poor ability
| to execute. This includes not only tech but music, interior
| design, cooking, conversation, anything. I definitely know the
| reverse; people who can execute quickly but produce something
| smelly.
|
| I'm reminded of the oft-quoted experiment where people judged
| on the number of ceramics they could create in a given time
| period ended up making higher quality output than people who
| were judged on their single best piece. The ability to make
| good judgements often is acquired by people who continuously
| have to make many judgements. And the ability to make many
| judgements is limited by your ability to execute.
| throw7 wrote:
| Thanks for the summary as I didn't read the article and I don't
| like arguing about "taste"... but I was piqued by "do what's
| needed to do the work" as "skill". I was reminded of the
| entrance plaque to the Schoellkopf Power Station:
|
| to know what to do... wisdom
|
| to know how to do it... skill
|
| to do the thing as it should be done is... service
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| I'd argue that taste is a kind of skill (or more generally,
| knowledge). It can be developed. Doing things requires a
| multitude of skills. Depending on the task, some skills may be
| more impactful. There is also some co-development depending on
| the skill.
|
| Basically, to get better at something, usually you have to
| branch out and develop periphery skills and knowledge. For
| example, don't just focus on writing bug-free code fast, but
| also on software design, and design in general. And team
| management. And people skills. And read research papers and
| algorithms. And learn from past failures and case studies, etc.
| runevault wrote:
| I'll give a simple example. Do you think knowing how to write a
| lexer and parser means you know how to write the syntax of a
| language that will be pleasant to use? Because knowing the
| algorithms to do one does not mean you have the skills to do
| the other, which is a form of taste.
| club_tropical wrote:
| There is no "data" that would satisfy you if your intuition is
| so completely erased that you need some sociologist to tell you
| this.
|
| Taste is a manifestation of beauty and beauty in all forms is
| universal and hypnotic and skill-independent. Babies, animals,
| 80 year old grandmas, all incapable of executing, all still
| respond to beauty. Beauty instantiates itself in different
| "tastes" of the day, maybe, but there is no act of beauty that
| becomes ugly over time. There are buildings from across the
| world 500 AD we consider beautiful and even try to emulate
| today. Execution has very little to do with this; you don't
| need to be a bricklayer to appreciate the pretty brick building
| from 16th century London.
|
| The people who are most incapable of having good taste are
| generally _not_ the unskilled people - those actually
| instinctively orient themselves to beauty when they encounter
| it - far from it, it is the _lesser skilled_ people who resent
| their inability to produce something of beauty and respond
| crabs-in-a-bucket style by taking true beauty down a notch. It
| is pompous art gallery types that will try to persuade you that
| the signed toilet bowl is "akshually art", worthy of being
| preserved in museums next to Caravaggio.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| well said.
|
| It's the same people that demand data before you can conclude
| that a quadriplegic is going to finish a 40 yard dash behind
| a non-quadraplegic.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| So then, what the heck happened in OOP country? Terse writing
| is the default and individuals discuss ad nauseam what they
| prefer.
| Jensson wrote:
| Do you think that a person who is great at coding games is also
| great at coming up with good game ideas to code?
| chrisweekly wrote:
| As someone who often thinks about these kinds of things, I like
| the OP's "skills as floor, taste as ceiling" take. Nothing earth-
| shattering here, but a cool little post.
| leetrout wrote:
| Ira Glass said this best over a decade ago.
|
| Couple sources:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbC4gqZGPSY
|
| https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/01/29/ira-glass-success-...
| pcurve wrote:
| That's a classic. Thanks for sharing.
| n0w wrote:
| I enjoyed the article, but I found the description of taste a bit
| nebulous.
|
| I think part of it is the knowledge and experience you base your
| expectations/perspective on.
|
| I would argue that there is a subjective aspect to taste that is
| determined by your personal/technical values. Having different
| values doesn't mean you have bad taste, it means you're
| optimising for different things.
|
| If you find yourself in an environment where you're unhappy
| because things don't match your taste, you might value different
| things. This doesn't necessarily mean anything is wrong or
| objectively bad.
|
| I think it's useful to frame things in this way because it can
| prevent you from dismissing the opinions of people that value
| different things.
|
| Diversity of opinion and perspective is a good thing to a certain
| degree. Lack of a common set of shared values is probably a
| breeding ground for conflict though!
| booleandilemma wrote:
| _Taste and skill are totally independent._
|
| This is not true for things that matter. It's no coincidence that
| the example he chooses is movies, of all things.
|
| Skill is the independent variable. When your skill increases,
| your taste will increase.
|
| It's not more complicated than that.
|
| But a lot of people make it more complicated than that because
| they have an incentive to.
|
| Because convincing others that you have "taste" is a very useful
| skill (ha) in our world. It's how you can position yourself as a
| leader, manager, critic, etc. without taking the time to develop
| skill yourself. It's a shortcut.
|
| The trick is having to decoupling the two, which this article
| tries at.
|
| I'd take 1 engineer with skill over 100 with "taste" (whatever
| that means) any day.
| haskell_melody wrote:
| Great article.
| taylorbuley wrote:
| Highly recommend Ira Glass's peptalk on this topic as related to
| storytelling, about embracing the process of failing forward.
| https://vimeo.com/24715531
| robocat wrote:
| Linus Torvalds talks about taste in
| https://www.tag1consulting.com/blog/interview-linus-torvalds...
| I did maintain Git for a few months, and the thing that made me
| ask Junio if he wanted to be the maintainer is that very-hard-to-
| describe notion of "good taste". I don't really have a better
| description for it: programming is about solving technical
| problems, but how you solve them, and how you think about them is
| important too, and it's one of those things you start to
| recognize over time: certain people have that "good taste" thing
| and pick the "right" solution. I don't want to claim
| that programming is an art, because it really is mostly just
| about "good engineering". I'm a big believer in Thomas Edison's
| "one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration"
| mantra: it's almost all about the little details and the everyday
| grunt-work. But there is that occasional "inspiration" part, that
| "good taste" thing that is about more than just solving some
| problem - solving it cleanly and nicely and yes, even
| beautifully. And Junio had that "good taste".
| And every time Git comes up, I try to remember to really make it
| very very clear: I may have started and designed the core ideas
| in Git, but I often get too much credit for that part. It's been
| 15+ years, and I was really only involved with Git in that first
| year. Junio has been an exemplary maintainer, and he's the one
| who has made Git what it is today. Btw, this whole
| "good taste" thing and finding people who have it, and trusting
| them - that's very much not just about Git. It's very much the
| history of Linux too. Unlike Git, Linux is obviously a project
| that I still do actively maintain, but very much like Git, it's
| also a project with lots of other people involved, and I think
| one of the big successes of Linux is having literally hundreds of
| maintainers around, all with that hard-to-define "good taste",
| and all people who maintain parts of the kernel.
| mark_undoio wrote:
| This also reminds me there are different dimensions to taste.
|
| A developer can have both excellent taste and skill in code and
| lack one or both in its user interface. For instance, I'd
| personally say git seems to be amazingly successful and robust
| but that the UX could be much more consistent without
| sacrificing any power.
|
| I fully expect there are other dimensions to this too for other
| overlapping domains in software engineering. Something like
| E.g:
|
| - testing - does the test code work? (skill), is it making the
| most of opportunities for coverage and self-documentation
| (taste? Or a different kind of skill?) - API design - can it do
| what's required? (skill), is it a sensible ABI too? (skill),
| can others understand it? (taste), is boilerplate minimal?
| (taste) - documentation - is it correct _and_ complete (skill)
| _and_ understandable? (taste) - code review - can you spot bugs
| and inconsistencies? (skill), are you giving feedback that
| allows incremental improvements without overwhelming? (taste)
|
| I fully believe both skill and taste can be learned in all
| these areas but different thought processes will help in each.
| k__ wrote:
| This is an interesting take. I had the impression Unix devs
| often see the Linux kernel as a bad example for "taste".
| avg_dev wrote:
| I have a lot of respect for both Linus Torvalds and Junio
| Hamano. I think git has been very important, Linux even moreso.
| But why didn't darcs or hg win instead? I will never know.
|
| This ultimately sums up my thoughts:
| https://twitter.com/markrussinovich/status/15784512452490526...
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