Comment by MerrimanInd
6 hours ago
I'm more of a coffee nerd than a steak aficionado but I've often made the comparison between those two. In both cases, the enthusiast considers their skill in making coffee/cooking steak to be a differentiator and they immerse themselves deeply into the process, skills, and tools. But for both coffee beans and steak the most important factor for a good end product is starting with high quality inputs. In other words, most of the work is being done by the farmers, the processors, and the quality of the raw stock (the cow or the coffee plant). Your job at the very end of that long value adding chain is to not ruin the hard work that others have put into it.
I'm not sure if this analogy holds up in the AI software metaphor that the author of the blog post is making.
Coffee is a good metaphor here too, because bad technique can ruin a good steak just as surely as good coffee. "knows how to use a meat thermometer and reverse sear" describes like 10% of the population or less, same with coffee - there are people who use a bad grinder and a not-regularly-cleaned Mr. Coffee with good beans and get gas station coffee, and there are people out there making solidly B+ class coffee using costco beans, a no name burr grinder, and a french press.
Edit for people who've never had good coffee:
"I don't like coffee. Can James Hoffmann change that?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-iNAyu-ejo
I know people who can cook a lot of food pretty well, but don't understand why they can't use a laser thermometer to check their meat.
Knowing really is half the battle.
What I've really gotten out of this is that I'd like to learn how to use a (proper) meat thermometer when I make steaks.
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If you cook enough you can tell by feel
Ok, using a laser thermometer for food is hilarious. Thanks for this xD
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Perhaps I'm crazy, but I truly can't taste much of a difference between "good" coffee and "bad" coffee.
I can certainly tell the difference between a good steak and a bad one.
You'll start to taste the difference once you get that one really-well-made pourover at a place that _lives_ for the love of coffee.
There are some coffee beans that have crazy taste profiles when properly extracted with the right water. I had one that tastes literally like a peach and another that tasted like a really nice tea.
Or maybe not. Different strokes!
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It’s about experience. If you’re not into classical music, or jazz, or metal, it all sounds the same - how could anybody tell the difference? Only when you put in the work to listen to it a lot, different works, and actually pay attention, you will notice how your sense and understanding develops over time. Suddenly you’re able to make out differences, recognise patterns and repeated segments and structure where before there was none.
Or pick dancing: when you start out, you’re entirely occupied with placing your feet in the right spots at the right time. As you practice, your mind gets freed up and you’re able to make deliberate alterations, embellishments, larger figures. That seems impossible at the start.
Believe me, there's a huge spectrum, from the sweet aroma of freshly ground Brazilian beans to straight up cat piss coffee sold in supermarkets.
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That likely means that you've only had "bad" coffee. You're one of today's lucky 10,000 - go treat yourself to a decent cup of coffee it tastes completely different. The difference between a good steak and a bad steak is actually a good comparison.
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I thought that too, honestly, before I had truly great coffee. I honestly didn't like coffee at all, and then a coworker brought in some coffee he'd roasted and prepared himself and it was lifechangingly good. I also made myself incredibly sick with the enormous amount of caffeine, it's been very rare that I've had to go home from work in the middle of the day but that was one.
I bet the same analogy can be applied to cooking a cucumber.
Pickling a cucumber sure has a lot of resemblance - a great cucumber is good fresh and great pickled, but a bad pickling brine can ruin even a great cucumber.
I don't know about about cocktails, but aren't traditional mixed alcoholic drinks an even more straightforward example? There's very little that goes into an old fashioned, or a Manhattan, or a martini. Just 2-3 ingredients each that should be as high quality as possible. I guess you probably want nice ice and glassware too.
I don't know if I agree with the take I've written below, but I think you can make the analogy work:
It has been argued, even in the before-AI-times, that most professional software is just gluing together open source tools and libraries. Your job isn't to write software, it's to set up redis and postgres and a programming language and a react frontend or whatever in a way that lets them do what they're there to do. Most modern programming is just configuration of pre-existing tools. It doesn't really matter how good your code is as long as it isn't terrible, Real Programmers already did 95% of the necessary work before you decided to build your little app.
> Your job at the very end of that long value adding chain is to not ruin the hard work that others have put into it.
"Your job is to not mess up."
Also applicable to any corporate job.
To achieve the best outcomes, I agree.
But even a cheap steak can be decent if it's cooked properly. And an expensive prime cut can be ruined by cooking it improperly.
But the point is that no matter how well you cook the steak you're not creating quality, you're just getting the most out of what you have. The cow and the farmer created that quality. I believe we lose sight of that because so much of the value chain is not visible to us and we hyper fixate on the fun part, becoming a better barista/chef.
Yes. It is about learning all of these things. Knowing what kind of cut you have, and how to treat it to best effect.
A very tough gristly cut can be improved by tenderizing. Going low-and-slow/sous vide to melt the connective tissue. Even grinding it up to make a hamburger steak / loco moco.
Once you know all of those things, choosing the right approach and executing it is not that hard. The steps themselves are simple.
It's this story all over again:
https://engineerine.com/10000-dollar-chalk-mark/
No one with an IQ above room temperature believes that story.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/know-where-man/
This story is AI slop
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Any steak can be delicious with a butter bath and then hit it with that A1 :).
> hit it with that A1
Sir, I regret to inform you that you are going straight to hell.
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Why don’t you skip the meat and just make a butter and A1 soup :)
For a moment I thought it is hitting with AI.
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I'd say that using a manual espresso machine and getting good tasting coffee from light roasted beans is vastly harder than making a good steak.