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
Typically this is because programmers are treated as workers on assembly line instead of carpenters making beatiful chest of drawers.

>>yetihe+15
One might also note, pound for pound, most chests of drawers are probably bought from Wal-Mart or Ikea.

>>Reacti+m5
And unfortunately, since I enjoy woodworking, the Walmart chest of drawers is just as functional and often much better value than the finely crafted one. There’s virtue in building something accessible that improves things even if it doesn’t have “fine joinery” so to speak.

>>mikeyo+27
Much better value? I disagree. High quality products built by artisans mean you aren’t participating(as much) in globalist, race-to-the-bottom corporate behavior. You know where your dollars are going and mostly what was involved in making it. Not to mention, handcrafted, high quality furniture lasts so much longer too, like multiple lifetimes.

All it takes is placing ethics (physical resource use, living standards of those who make your stuff) higher in your value approximation. I hate spending money on disposable goods with a passion, as a result I value the walmart chest of drawers negatively because owning and using it will make me unhappy.

>>rivers+Uc1
That's all very well, but the average person does not have the money to spend on well-crafted furniture. At the end of the day, they need somewhere to store their stuff and a cheap chest of drawers does the job. Ethics about buying choices are for people with money and will make zero difference in the grand scheme of things. Maybe that chest of drawers falls apart after 5 years instead of 20, but that's not going to sway a person who just gets by financially.

If you hate globalisation, then maybe that can be tackled with better legislation, improvements in working conditions and standards of living, and other systematic changes. It's not going to be changed by lecturing poor people on the ethics of buying cheap stuff.

>>danjac+P12
Exactly. A relative of mine works for a fine furniture company in the Midwest, they have a production line making high-quality items with traditional joinery and actual hardwood and hardwood veneers. We were shopping for furniture for our house and needed a big dresser, I reached out and their version cost $8,000. That would support American jobs and my relative directly, but $8,000! We ended up with a West Elm one in a similar style for $1,800. A Walmart one with cheap particle board could be had for $800. Even if the Walmart one only lasted 5-years, you could buy 50-years worth for the same price as the US-made one.

Weighing "Value" means you need to consider many dimensions and people have different weights, priorities and abilities to service those dimensions.

At some level, a dresser is just a box for my t-shirts and socks. Similarly a link-shortening website probably doesn't need a typesafe, fully commented code base.