Comment by embedding-shape
1 day ago
"Others like it" could be one definition. "I like it" can be another. Personally, it kind of differs depending on what I'm doing, what exactly it means.
1 day ago
"Others like it" could be one definition. "I like it" can be another. Personally, it kind of differs depending on what I'm doing, what exactly it means.
Okay but what does it mean in the context of coding or software? Like if someone claims good taste is the differentiator fod good and bad in software, they should have some basic objective ways to measure it right? If its just vibes we're going with then everyone has subjective taste and everyone's app is good. Overall I still think its meaningless/lazy to talk about vague terms as guiding principles or key differentiators.
Have you ever been tasked to maintain a badly coded legacy app? Have you ever read some snippet that is so clear you don’t have anything to edit? Those are the opposite points of things. It’s not objective because the computer doesn’t care anyway.
It’s like a well written prose vs a drunk’s rambling. They could describe the same scene, but one is much pleasurable to listen to. Or strolling through a well-tended garden vs walking in a landfill.
So it’s subjective, but you know instinctively what you prefer to work with.
Again, all of those are metaphors that describe a feeling and not anything concrete. Like what makes a codebase feel like "strolling through a well-tended garden"--there has to be some objective measures for that, right? Some things like "it's easier to maintain" or "it has really good readability," etc? Why are we not talking specifics of this "taste" instead of using The Karate Kid wax-on wax-off type metaphors?
And that is my central gripe with this piece--it doesn't care about the details and handwaves everything bad as having "bad taste." That is fundamentally lazy imo.
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