

Gearheads don't get it - mooders
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1186-gearheads-dont-get-it

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stcredzero
I knew a young aspiring (and penniless) artist in Cincinnati. She took
gorgeous photos. Her method? She got to know lots of gorgeous young women,
made friends with them and put them at ease, waited for just the right time of
the day on a suitably sunny day, called up her friends and snapped them with a
disposable camera.

She had photos hanging in galleries and cafes taken with a disposable camera.

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j2d2
I don't think the analogy makes sense. Tone, with a guitar, definitely comes
from the gear you use. Tone is precisely where there is so much gear and why
there are so many knobs over all of it. You may recognize the style of eddie
van halen playing out of crap gear, but you will not recognize the tone as
anything other than crap.

 _Edit: If you downmod me, please explain why. I've played guitar for many
years and know what I said is a fact._

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qwph
Maybe what he means by "tone" is what you mean by "style".

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j2d2
Then, as I said, he's wrong. Tone and style have very clear meanings in the
world of guitar and they are not the same.

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qwph
I guess we'll have to conclude that the "world of guitar" meanings of the
terms are substantially narrower than those used by laymen.

<http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/tone>

<http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/style>

~~~
j2d2
Fair enough.

In the interest of educating everyone: Tone is more like turning the bass and
treble up or down on an equalizer. Contrast this with hearing an original
version of a song and then someone else covering it and you'll have a good
idea of how style is different from tone.

Equipment is precisely how you change tone, though there are possibilities for
tone changes with existing equipment.

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jacobbijani
I think you made your point already. The author may have used the wrong
scientific term in the article.

That does not, in the slightest bit, make it any less true. Whatever you want
to call it, a persons personal ability has a very real impact on how they
performa a specific task, independent of any equipment they use.

The point is to find the thing you are passionate about and DO THAT. Don't get
caught up in trying to figure out the specifics of it. If you are good at it,
none of that matters.

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j2d2
The point was made with my first post and then some confusion was found so I
clarified. I see no harm in that...

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jacobbijani
Alright then. Hopefully my comment didn't come off too aggressive...

~~~
j2d2
No worries bruthah!

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bscofield
I found this post interesting, given that I heard a similar rant in the
speaker lounge at a conference a while back—a designer was complaining loudly
about people who asked her what tools she used to produce her oft-admired
products (obviously, I'm anonymizing here). "MY BRAIN," she said snarkily.

My reaction (which I suppressed at the the time, since I was rehearsing my
talk yet again) was that not everyone is out to get you when they ask about
this. Not everyone expects to be able to do what you do just by picking up the
same tools. Many people may just be asking out of interest, looking for
alternatives to the applications they currently use, trying to improve
processes.

Personally, I'm happy to evangelize the tools I use. I think they improve my
productivity, and in general the more people using something, the better the
community around and support for it.

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DarkShikari
This seems to go back to the saying "a bad programmer can write COBOL in any
language"; no matter how good your tools, it doesn't prevent you from shooting
yourself in the foot.

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stcredzero
I have seen such horrors firsthand. A Smalltalk subsystem where all methods
were class-side methods, only referred to local variables, and had variations
of the same long list of arguments. All of these methods were copy and paste
variants of each other and involved nested loops, multiple incrementing
indexed array references, and conditional logic 4 or 5 levels deep. The coder
who wrote these: a PhD in math who insisted she had a great understanding of
Objects.

What's more, she's outlasted everyone in the group and is now in charge of the
entire application!

~~~
trevelyan
survival of the fittest. maybe we'll all be coding like that in 15 years.

~~~
stcredzero
In her case, it was an adeptness at gaming the corporate management system.
After she wrote that code, she managed to put herself in a nebulous position
between two groups where she was thought to be invaluable, yet all she did was
to tell other people when they were doing something wrong, but never actually
had to fix anything. You could often see her at the coffee shop reading a
novel in the middle of the day.

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jacobbijani
Here is an example some people on here might be able to relate to. Have you
ever tried coding on a computer that isn't your own (the library, a computer
lab, a friends house, etc)? You know how difficult it is, not having your own
development environment and keyboard? Wouldn't you still be able to produce
some really high quality code if you needed/wanted to? Now imagine if someone
who was unskilled in programming sat at your computer. Would they know what to
do?

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yan
I find that the quality that makes tools in general good is their ability to
get out of your way and become an intuitive extension of yourself. Anything
less than that, you end up fighting with and tricking it into doing what you
want it to do.

A good camera, guitar, text editor, IDE, sports car, etc won't make someone
with little skill better, but it will let someone who is excellent at what
they do express themselves without fighting it.

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mynameishere
Does not work with surgeons and ice cream scoops. Or several other things.

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YuriNiyazov
The article doesn't say that good tools don't help - the article says that you
will not become a good "insert anything here" if all you have are great tools
and no innate ability or vision. In other words - if I am not a good runner,
then having expensive orthopedic sneakers while I am running will not do me
much good. If I am a good runner, then having those sneakers will make me
better.

~~~
mynameishere
_you will not become a good "insert anything here" if all you have are great
tools and no innate ability or vision._

Yeah.

I know.

But that's pretty well-understood. I don't think anyone ever thought that. No
one really thinks, "Good tools==success". And so we are again faced with the
typical 37signals blog entry, the shtick of which is to state humdrum truisms
to a galley of fawning fanboys, who litter the comment section with love
unlimited. But, as usual, they somehow still manage to deviate from more
strongly stated opinions,

 _What do hackers want? Like all craftsmen, hackers like good tools. In fact,
that's an understatement. Good hackers find it unbearable to use bad tools.
They'll simply refuse to work on projects with the wrong infrastructure._

True, yes? All craftsmen demand the best tools, and there's no harm in having
them, or refining them, or arguing over their merits.

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elai
Tools do help a lot although. Sometimes using a debugger is the quickest way
to fix a bug, and not being able to use one (because of a lack of a remote
debugger) can make a 10 minute bug into a 30 minute bug.

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josefresco
Lack of proper tools can severely hamper your ability to excel in many fields.
As a web designer, I rely heavily on my vector graphics software that can't be
replaced easily by something else. The tools in this software allow me to
create designs that would be impossible with other less sophisticated
applications.

The point of this article is only valid in a fantasy world where one doesn't
look too hard at the details.

You'd think as geeks we'd understand better the importance of killer-
apps/killer-features and technical innovations for the world of the creative.

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gaius
I don't know, so this is a genuine question: How much language/tool advocacy
does DHH do?

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mechanical_fish
Plenty - I mean, the guy wrote his own tools, and he's not shy about promoting
them. I wouldn't call him a zealot, but he's manifestly picky about tools.

Not that there's any contradiction here. It is true that your skill transcends
any particular tool, but it is also true that skilled people often become
quite picky about tools. I doubt that Eddie Van Halen owns only one guitar.

The mistake is not caring about the tools, or taking trouble to find - or
build - the tool that suits you. The mistake is attributing too much power to
the tool and not enough to the user.

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stcredzero
There are two kinds of seekers of good instruments. One kind pushes
him/herself so hard that they run up against the limitations of their
instruments and so are driven to find better ones. Another kind doesn't push
themselves so hard, but gravitates towards the advantages of better a better
instrument even though they still have even more scope for improving their own
playing through technique.

I think this also extends to software tools.

~~~
gaius
Good tools also give you room to grow into them, so you can concentrate on
learning without having to worry too much about housekeeping or maintenance
tasks.

As a personal example, I became a better photographer when I bought a good
(but used) Nikon, because I _know_ it's built to take some abuse (people
photograph wars with these) so I happily take photos in wild places and never
worry that it's going to get damaged.

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strlen
I suspect, however, that there are hackers involved in (or doing) start-ups
not for the sake of creating anything - but for the sake of playing with
genuinely interesting technology (be it in infrastructure, multi-tiered
architecture, cool programming languages that they may not get a chance to use
otherwise).

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mrkurt
How about: companies that summarily disqualify developer candidates who prefer
to use Windows?

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hernan7
He is right about playing guitar. Tone is in the fingers -- alas.

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j2d2
No he's not. You'll have to elaborate or see my other comment.

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parenthesis
It is on unamplified guitar. The guitar itself (including the strings) is also
a factor, but varying plucking position and method (pick, nail, flesh etc.)
gives huge variations in tone. These things also affect tone on amplified
guitar, though less so as more excessive processing (distortion etc.) is
added.

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fallentimes
"Startup folks that worry more about software and scaling issues then how to
actually get customers and make money."

Dead on.

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terpua
The same is true for golf.

