
Da Vinci – Overrated? - bze12
https://www.bedelstein.com/post/da-vinci
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keiferski
This reads almost as a parody of tech entrepreneurship and the modern age.
Steve Jobs is more praiseworthy than da Vinci, because he "shipped" products
for the consumer market, as compared to da Vinci, who was more interested in
artistic and scientific knowledge for its own sake? Is this legitimately what
the author thinks?

The post is also wrong/misinformed on a number of things. Da Vinci _did_
intend to build a number of his plans, but was thwarted by the fact that he
lived in conflict-ridden Renaissance Italy. For example, his design for a
gigantic bronze horse never became a reality as his patron used the bronze for
making cannons.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo%27s_horse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo%27s_horse)

~~~
moron4hire
Yeah, it's not like we have Steve Jobs' notebooks to be able to know and
compare all of the projects he worked on that never saw the light of day.
Apple is notoriously a very secretive company. We often don't find out about
canned projects until a decade later.

Nobody ships everything they work on. This is a creators' myth that I don't
know why keeps getting perpetuated.

~~~
keiferski
I think the entire argument is absurd. Da Vinci _did_ ship - he created
hundreds of artworks and by any measure (other than money) achieved more than
Jobs - and I say that as a fan of Steve Jobs.

~~~
moron4hire
Agreed completely. The proof is in the pudding. Da Vinci _has_ had a massively
lasting impact on human culture. 500 years later, we still talk about him.

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jonnypotty
Comparing Steve Jobs to Da Vinci? There is no appropriate comparison here. You
think Da Vinci should have 'shipped more'? So often people think they can pick
and choose characteristics, why can't you be more like this, or that, or sure
Micheal Jordan was good, but he would have been better if he was nice. It's
the naive, arrogant picking apart of things that we just don't understand and
it stunts our understanding of things. Try and learn from great artists maybe
rather than believing we have some insight into how they could have been
'better', more 'productive'. I'm completely baffled at the idea that Da Vinci
didn't contribute as much as he should or could have.

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nend
He left a lot of inventions in the design phase, but the truth is da Vinci
shipped more than most of us ever will.

Some of his inventions couldn't be built during his time either, so it wasn't
simply that he always lost interest. Seems a bit unfair to mention design
flaws but not point out that he was designing machines that required materials
that didn't exist yet.

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the_af
It reads like a parody to be honest. I'm hoping it is one.

Of particular interest is the author's equivocation of Jobs' Reality
Distortion Field. The author makes it seem as if it was Jobs' ability to
distort the world to create something unexpected, but most of us use the term
to describe how Jobs could make people believe all sorts of dumb things while
in his presence (and the effect wore off when not in his presence, when people
realized these things were indeed dumb). It's not a positive thing.

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r32a_
Leonardo did "ship" some of the greatest works of art. Some of those paintings
took decades to complete. Which you happily glanced over.

Comparing steve jobs to Leonardo is a discredit to both steve jobs and
leonardo.

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rramadass
A most sacrilegious article by a clueless author :-) This silliness where
people just parrot platitudes like "execution", "implementation" without
really understanding what it means is the bane of all Creativity.

The mark of a _Genius_ is an insatiable curiosity about a wide variety of
subjects and the willingness to jump into every one of them without regard to
other people's expectations. Da vinci was unparalleled in that respect. The
breadth of his interests is what makes him so great. Execution is always
limited by circumstances like political climate, patrons, resources etc. Given
the uncertain times that Da vinci lived through, it is an absolute miracle
that he was able to do as much as he did. To dismiss it all by using
platitudes like "Real artists/engineers" ship" is the height of ignorance and
hubris.

Further reading:

* The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Vols I & II (Dover publications)

* Leonardo on the Human Body (Dover publications)

* Leonardo, The Complete Paintings and Drawings by Frank Zollner (Taschen Publications). This is a huge book but worth every penny. I believe it was later republished in multiple volumes due to its size.

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KKPMW
I read the post and appreciate the perspective but disagree so strongly with
this that cannot pass without leaving a comment.

Claiming da Vinci is overrated to Jobs because Jobs shipped more is on the
same bar as saying Beethoven is overrated because his music is not suitable
for a disco club and is less profitable.

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lqet
I am regularly seeing Steve Jobs described as a genius both in posts and
comments on HN. I am always genuinely wondering: what is this based on? From
my perspective, Jobs had an amazing talent for motivating people, and for
selling both himself and his product in a cult-like way. But a _genius_?

> Leonardo had no trouble distorting reality either, the only difference is
> that Jobs could actually make these ideas happen.

What ideas exactly? Selling computers Steve Wozniak designed? Releasing an MP3
player that looked better than previous ones? Removing smartphone keyboards?

~~~
rramadass
Exactly! The word _genius_ has lost its real meaning.

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danfritz
What I always learned about Da Vinci was that he was a pacifist. He was
employed as a "military engineer" but he saw himself more as a scientist [1].
It's also debatable if those "errors" were left on purpose to prevent his work
for being copied or it where real errors.

[1] [https://theconversation.com/four-ways-in-which-leonardo-
da-v...](https://theconversation.com/four-ways-in-which-leonardo-da-vinci-was-
ahead-of-his-time-115338)

------
dariot
I agree with others who disagree with the post. It's true that both Leonardo
and Jobs were visionaries and it's true that Leonardo lost interest quickly (I
guess that's because he was curious about so many different things) but
there's a very big difference between the two: Leonardo was inventing,
designing and eventually building his own things, Steve Jobs had hundreds of
highly talented engineers for that.

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jedimastert
I think this might be a misunderstanding of who both of these people were.

Steve Jobs was an engineer. He saw 10 years into the future and made it
happen.

I prefer to think of Da Vinci as a proto sci-fi artist. It'd be like calling
Jules Verne a hack for not actually making his time machine...

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mark_l_watson
I so strongly disagree.

Years ago, alone of my consulting customers sent me a 40 pound giant book of
Da Vinci’s notes, art, inventions, etc. Amazing corpus of intellectual
curiosity and exploration, not to mention all the great art.

~~~
rramadass
Can you please share the name of the book?

~~~
mark_l_watson
I gave the book away three years ago (after enjoying it for years), so I am
not 100% sure of the title, but I think it was the hardcover edition of
"Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings"

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butterfi
I think the idea of "shipping" in this context is misplaced. "Shipping", as
used colloquially, means to send a product to market, which is not the point
of art. Artists create. Businesses ship.

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deep-root
I regretfully clicked on this click bait... Are non-advertising interstitials
on mobile becoming a thing? It feel unnatural to have the page loaded but
locked for a few seconds.

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P-NP
Many don't believe that the rather unimpressive 'Salvator Mundi' was painted
by Leonardo. Nevertheless, it sold for 450 million bucks. His most famous
paintings such as the Mona Lisa might bring hundreds of billions if they were
on the market. Probably more than what Steve Jobs ever owned. So much for
'shipping products to the consumer market.'

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trentnix
As an artist and idea generator, he is virtually peerless. As a product
creator and businessman, his performance isn't impressive.

Is he _overrated_? It depends on what you value and how you're keeping score.

~~~
asjw
How many businessmen do you know that have been summoned by very powerful
people to help fix their country's problems?

To Da Vinci it happened several times, he spoke and had relations with some of
the most powerful people of his time: Medici, Sforza, Borgia, Francis I (king
of France) and for each one of them he designed and often built
infrastructures for their cities.

Even the Sultan of the ottoman empire Bayezid II asked Leonardo to design a
bridge for him, in 1502

It would have been the longest bridge in the world at the times, MIT tests
proved his project was solid and centuries ahead of times, in 2011 Norway
built a bridge based on that design and Instanbul Is thinking about it as
well.

So, all in all, he wasn't so bad at doing business.

~~~
trentnix
It would have been better had I said his performance isn't _as_ impressive.

Whether he had business acumen wasn't really my point. But it's obvious his
business acumen isn't his legacy. His amazing art, brilliant ideas, and
diversity of ideas is his legacy.

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mack1001
I think OPs goal was to evoke reaction to his post On HN and looks like he was
pretty successful at that.

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layoutIfNeeded
If this is not peak tech bubble, then I don't know what it is.

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the-dude
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

So, no.

