zlacker

>>todsac+(OP)
Not a huge Steve Jobs fanboy, but I always liked his quote[1] about craftsmanship, sweating the details, and giving a fuck:

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

I think software as a whole suffers greatly from this "well, I got it barely done, technically fulfilling the requirements, so my work is over" attitude.

1: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/445621-when-you-re-a-carpen...

>>ryandr+n4
I don’t know what fictional carpenters Jobs was talking about. Real carpenters need to be pragmatic and cost effective to stay competitive in the market.

Using expensive wood or spending time doing things nobody will see will lower your throughout and raise your costs unnecessarily for the customer.

Even a master carpenter has finite time and money. Every morcel of time spent doing things nobody can see is time not spent doing other things with more visibility. The masters are still competing with other masters in a globally competitive market.

So Job’s fictional carpenter would get outcompeted by the hypothetical free market where carpenters of equal skill are producing more at lower cost.

>>j7ake+bh
This is not wisdom, this is someone venting.

The truth is way more nuanced than “the master carpenter would get outcompeted.”

>>mattgr+ol
The truth is also way more nuanced than what Jobs is describing. I was just showing how ridiculous his argument is.

>>j7ake+Am
I advocate for a non-naive optimism here because one’s views on this greatly influence one’s mental climate.

If you believe the race to the bottom prevents you from doing great work, then you will not do great work.

>>mattgr+po
If one takes a craft to be their profession, then one must be pragmatic because time and resources are finite. Otherwise one should take the craft as a hobby instead.

Spending all your time polishing details that nobody cares about is not doing great work, it is wasting time. Time that could have been spent experimenting on new techniques, trying new ideas, taking on new projects.

>>j7ake+Eu
>Time that could have been spent experimenting on new techniques, trying new ideas, taking on new projects.

this mindset seems to be the exact ones that coporate companies sinking in tech debt has. The absurd extreme of this is that carpentry is a waste of time when you could be making more money as a doctor.

Fact is you don't need to be 100% optimal on time and resources and you don't need infinite money to live. I'm sure carpenters work on thin margins but a few pieces of plywood won't bankrupt them and leave theif families on the streets.

If someone sacrifices a little time and money for personal satisfaction and pride, that's fine. If they want to maximize profits that's also fine (as long as they aren't abusing their labor to do so). C'est la vie.