When the work is equal to the knowledge and judgment of the painter, it is a bad sign; and when it surpasses the judgment, it is still worse, as is the case with those who wonder at having succeeded so well. But when the judgment surpasses the work, it is a perfectly good sign ; and the young painter who possesses that rare disposition, will, no doubt, arrive at great perfection. He will produce few works, but they will be such as to fix the admiration of every beholder.
Leonardo da Vinci, "A Treatise on Painting.", p. 225
> Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
(Ira Glass)
>For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good.
Sadly, that's why I don't start a lot of things that would interest me. You need to get into things when you're a kid and don't realize how junk your work is, because as an adult you just don't have time to dedicate to producing a lot of junk to get good at something. The are shortcuts and more directed learning you can do in a lot of areas to reduce some of the undirected learning you do as a child, but it's till time consuming when time is a rare commodity.
It works nicely for me, but doesn't really bring accolades (but a hell of a lot of folks actually rely on stuff I authored; they just don't know it, or care -which is just fine).
If your small stuff contributes to a strong foundation for other people, then they should care
It's a shame people lose sight of the ground beneath their feet when reaching to the sky
I'm very guilty of this too, partly because any time I try to look down the people I work with rush in to discourage me from doing that - it's not part of the sprint, after all
Anyways, I am not sure what stuff you build, but thank you for being the sort of person that builds strong foundational stuff that helps other people. We need more people like you. I should try and be more like you
We have built _a lot_ of things on top of shaky foundations. It is one of the tragedies of human society, that we are too resistant to rebuilding parts and accept the status quo too easily. There are network effects at play and probably other effects as well.
Basing our work on solid foundations, we shouldn't need to look towards the ground, when reaching up.
I remember reading a rather silly fantasy book, back in the '90s.
It was obviously written by a UNIX guy, and it featured a software geek that gets transported into a realm where magic works.
He then started to build a foundation of spells, even giving them UNIX names like "Grep," and "Sed."
It was all about how he built a powerful magic system, from scratch, starting with basic components, and combing them, into more ambitious components, and so on.
Most of my published work is components; usually, Swift Package Manager packages. Each one is carefully written and documented, then tested like crazy. It means that I can leverage them, without a second thought, as to Quality, or features.
Here's what I'm working on, now[0]. It still has a long way to go, but it's coming along nicely. It's a "swipeable" tab bar controller, so that iOS apps can behave like Android apps. I have been doing this by hand, in many of my latest apps, and I thought that it was a good candidate for commoditization.
I'll spend a lot of time, testing and documenting it, so it will be a "drop in" module that I'll be able to use for future apps.
I actually don't get what your tool does. I don't use MacOS, so maybe that is why I don't get it. If you could add screenshots of the tool in action, that could be helpful.
One of the things that we learn, as we mature, is that "It Depends" is a mantra for life.
A good filter is the "How Important is It?" filter.
If I'm adding dependencies to an app, a styling dependency is less crucial than an algorithm one. I may just apply some fairly basic checks to a styling dependency, and maybe use injection, to make it easy to swap out. I may also look for free, or low-cost ones.
For the algorithm, which may be my bread and butter, I might be a hell of a lot more demanding, and I may consider using a commercially-backed product.
> It's a shame people lose sight of the ground beneath their feet when reaching to the sky
Shakespeare:
> 'tis a common proof
\ That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
\ Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
\ But when he once attains the upmost round,
\ He then unto the ladder turns his back,
\ Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
\ By which he did ascend.
“The reason the gentleman is called worthy is not that he is able to do everything that the most skillful man can do. The reason the gentleman is called wise is not because he knows everything that the wise man knows. When he is called discriminating, this does not mean that he is able to split hairs so exhaustively as the sophists. That he is called an investigator does not mean that he is able to examine exhaustively into everything that an investigator may examine. He has his limit.
In observing high and low lands, in judging whether fields are poor or fertile, and in deciding where the various grains should be planted, the gentleman is not as capable as a farmer. When it is a matter of understanding commodities and determining their quality and value, the gentleman cannot vie with a merchant. As regards skill in the use of the compass, square, plumb line, and other tools, he is less able than an artisan. In disregarding right and wrong, truth and falsehood, but manipulating them so that they seem to change places and shame each other, the gentleman cannot compare with Hui Shih and Teng Hsi.
However, if it is a question of ranking men according to their virtue; if offices are to be bestowed according to ability; if both the worthy and the unworthy are to be put in their proper places… if all things and events are to be dealt with properly; if the charter of Shen Tzu and Mo Tzu are to be suppressed; if Hui Shih and Teng Hsi are not to dare to put forth their arguments; if speech is always to accord with the truth and affairs are always to be properly managed — it is in these matters that the gentleman excels.”
The behavior of the United Kingdom looks incoherent: it wants to become a surveillance state [1], but without using cameras manufactured in China, on the grounds that China is a surveillance state.
1) there is nothing incoherent in theoretical "we want obedient citizens under our full control, not controlled by Chinese government"
2) from your own link "But are we really a Big Brother state? You may think that the government is behind this high level of surveillance, but the BSIA found that only around 1 in 70 cameras are owned by local authorities"
And 99% of them go to the same cloud crap where a single entity can gain control of them all at once (I don't know if this is the current state, but you get the point, it's the inevitable state, be it one with 99% or maybe 5 groups with equal share. In the past all that was needed to take control of a security camera product was ../).
Imagine living in a village in the far past. Your neighbors with whom you will live with for 50 years form close relationships with you. They constantly judge you. They believe in nonsense superstitions, and further judge you by that. If you ever do or convey one thing that goes against their beliefs, they will kill or exile you. You do not sound like any more of a reasonable person. Contrary to popular belief, we do not live in an enlightened time. People still have the same mundane superstitions and morals and actively seek to punish people for violating them. I do not want a village future with you. CCTV is a means of enforcing the will of the people, and only the most opinionated people. It's not worth it for whatever small benefit like a few crimes being solved or punished.
If you can catch offenders everything else is just a matter of adjusting punishments to sufficient severity that offenders are removed from the system faster than they manifest.
Were you using Tor Browser ? From Switzerland, I can create free Proton accounts by solving a captcha, if I'm using Safari or Firefox. But if I use Tor on the same computer, the only option is to enter a phone number.
