"Oh lord, another hipster. Hurray for their 4 years of instant mastery." is what I think. Meanwhile, some of us have been doing it for 10, 20, and 40+ years.
The design is problematic in that it promotes terrible posture. The screen angle is odd and doesn't appear to align with a user's field of vision. And it looks like a kit car that just isn't designed beautifully like a Fiero-Lambo.
EDIT: Ultima GTR is another example. An impressive vehicle except for the design.
> Ultima GTR is another example. An impressive vehicle except for the design.
I like that car a lot - was pretty close to getting one many years ago - its the exterior though its not ... pretty. Design underneath - simple and elegant.
Overall this is a cool project. Not personally my favorite aesthetic, but super cool work.
I take issue with his characterization of japanese vs. western homes, though. Western homes are typically expected to be renovated over and over and last many many decades. Though the most modern ones may not last you 100, ask any buyer and they'll say they expect it to appreciate in value, be renovated and resold to someone else with no clear end date.
There are plenty of fallacies present in article. Appealing to the stuff that lasted a long time is the bullet-hole/armor meme. Modern Japan has plenty of examples of disposable consumerism. Invoking Blow and Muratori's names doesn't directly lead to "and therefore I will make a computer that does very little". Selling a good with less function as a luxury heirloom is just a common sales tactic.
A beautiful computer, to me, is a saddle to ride on - neither too cheap to respect, nor too expensive to use. That is, it's something akin to a Framework laptop with some nice peripherals and desk accessories, or FPGA recreations of old hardware. The mechanical keyboard market gets this - and it deserves further equivalents in other aspects of I/O, in the circuit designs and software stack.
The weak construction of US homes honestly should depreciate too, it's a cultural lie that we tell ourselves about how something built as cheaply as possible to 1970s codes by suburban land developers with asbestos and aluminum wiring is somehow appreciating versus the land it is sitting on.
I'd totally have torn down and replaced my house if that was something the homebuilding sector optimized for.
I wonder how this trend extends to the cities. You obviously can't build a highrise expecting to knock it down 30 years later. Do they just accept preowned apartments?
All that ornate stuff on the top was made for rich people.
People didn't go to the battlefield with some ridiculously ornate sword inlaid with gold and precious gems. That thing belonged to some rich nobleman and was an object of luxury. Though I imagine it could still cut if it came down to that, but that wasn't the main point of it, the point was showing how much money you had.
A sword in general wasn't what you battled with either, it's more of a backup weapon. But most people with a sword would have something very plain looking.
The average guy went to fight with something a lot more utilitarian looking, and simpler. They'd have spear consisting of a pointy metal tip on a wooden stick, because that's cheap and works great.
> They'd have spear consisting of a pointy metal tip on a wooden stick, because that's cheap and works great.
"Cheap" wasn't always the major factor. Some spears were cheap, but others were pretty darned expensive. In wars -- where trained people fought in groups and formations -- spears just worked better than swords.
The Greek phalanx, the Roman pilum, the lances of the medieval period, early modern pike-and-shot, etc. all showed the effectiveness of a long sharp, pointy stick.
Swords have many niches, like closed-quarters combat in cities, terrain (e.g. forest or mountain battles), etc., but the spear almost always dominated for mainstream war.
Yep, from the ancient Greek Dory-wielding Phalanges to 17th Century Pike and Shot, the long pointy stick has a long and formidable career as weapon of war.
So what? Beautiful objects were often made for rich people. In what sense does that invalidate their aesthetic qualities rather than confirm them? Average people famously have little sense of beauty. Average people don't make art.
I like the motivating spirit here, although I think the execution lacks in a few ways. If he builds another ten of these over the next thirty years it will be good. One suggestion he might enjoy is heavy physical switches / manual mechanical reconfiguration to switch apps. A big chunky dial that solidly clicks as you rotate it to point to different basic programs like text editing, the terminal, web browsing, photo or video editing… my mouth is watering already.
Something I disagree with entirely on an aesthetic level is the use of wood in this project. I do appreciate that humans have evolved to appreciate interacting with wood, but (perhaps because of my background in metalworking shops) I think humans are also capable of instinctively appreciating the nobility of metal.
One of the main reasons I buy Apple laptops is they’re made from metal and glass. I’m also a fan of typewriters with metal, glass, or ceramic keycaps. If Apple made a laptop with non-plastic keycaps that would be my ideal machine. Even better if they would use steel instead of aluminum - they did this with the Pro series of the iPhone 14 and I appreciate it almost daily. A lot of my Apple loyalty actually comes from the fact that they seem to respect metal as a material in their design process much more than other companies.
My ideal desktop machine would probably be made from the exact same materials as a lathe or milling machine, even down to the absurdly thick enamel or epoxy paint in Machine Green.
This is one of the most badly behaved comment sections I've seen on HN.
As at least some seem to exhibit, it is possible to criticise creativity without high-school level bullying.
Sometimes people read things like I've seen written here and get hit harder than anyone expects. If you've been close to the worst aftermath of such things you might think twice about who's reading what you wrote, and its impact.
Personally, what I didn't like about the article was the lack of photos of the final product - it looks really interesting, and I want to see more of it.
I hope the author, who seems based on username to likely also to be the OP, has a thicker skin than those here seeking to bruise it seem to think. They've no right to - and them assuming they do is the worst kind of entitlement.
I believe the moral of the story is to run your opening line by literally any human ("Modern software engineering is rotten. I should know — it's been my livelihood since I graduated from college in late 2019." - literally laugh out loud funny) before submitting it to one of the main discussion boards on modern software engineering - sometimes you reap what you sow
Where's the highschool-level bullying? If the comments called him butthead or pimply-faced then I'd agree, but I skimmed, but they all seem accurate, although brutally honest. Then again I admit I'm biased for the commenters.
The author starts their piece off by calling all of software rotten citing their experience as a professional dev for 3.5 years. This is the first sentence of it.
I've seen this sort of reaction on occasion if I go out of my way to write in a manner I find enjoyable and interesting. It seems to evoke a certain kind of innate tribalism in people along the lines of "you do not write like us, so you are unlike us!"
It's quite bothersome, and it often comes from people who supposedly pride themselves on being open-minded. As soon as you start writing in this way people will accuse you of 'trying to seem smarter than you are' and it seems to trigger some kind of persecution complex. It's like dude, maybe I just enjoy larping as a Victorian? Keep off my neck!
It's pretty much what I've come to expect out of HN, unfortunately. There's a very good chance that most of the people commenting read the first two paragraphs, had a kneejerk reaction and then—if we're lucky, and with HN commenters, we rarely are—maybe skimmed the rest of it.
Edit: Actually, having read the comments, I think a bunch of them just looked at the picture.
Sometimes I think it would have been nice to have been born rich. But then I come across something like that and I think: "Meh, the risk of becoming someone like this guy would be too high"
The very thing he built would not be able to exist without the ubiquity of the very "ugly" computers that he eschews. Computers became affordable because they were mass produced as cheaply as possible, with less and less regard to aesthetics.
Let's not also forget that various companies have tried to make computers beautiful, or at least less ugly. Who can forget the swoopy-curvy-nearly-art-deco computer cases of the early 2000's? The iMac G3, the Compaq Presario's, and the other ones that tried to round out the corners of the beige boxes that we were all so used to by then?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I applaud your effort to create something unique that you enjoy, but personally I think that computer is arguably the ugliest I've ever seen, and I used an emachine in the 90s...
Yeah I'll be honest the work is nice but the author comes off as extremely insufferable. The writing gives off the impression that the author wants us to see him as this highly educated renaissance man, but it feels like that impression is being forced. Which is unfortunate because I seem to have quite a bit in common with him. Gentle reminder to myself to try and NOT talk like this.
I feel this would also be suited by connecting the topic to trends in minimalism and maximalism. Also maybe a better comparison to the guns and swords (which were essentially accessories) would be to smartphones and the cases people use - it's a more similar comparison, although not relevant to the "building a computer" part.
The article leans heavily on traditionalist phrasings - "no one was lifting the most centrally important functional objects in our lives into the domain of beauty. The practice of these long-gone artisans had disappeared." And then tracing some etymology back to PIE and referring to that etymology as imparting "thousands of years of wisdom from the most successful cultures in history." onto a phrase is a statement that couldn't possibly be more Euro-centric (and linguistically ill-informed - almost every word has thousands of years of history).
"The process of 'men of strength, skill, and virtue using their hands to enforce their will on materials' should not be forgotten." feels really gross in a modern context - it's not too far off from complaining about "what happened to real men." as if the past was some glorious golden age (and has kind of imperialist vibes - why must men "enforce" their will on materials? What structure does "enforce" imply that "work with" does not?)
And then ending with a quote from The Aeneid is just... I don't know what the word is, pretentious? I'm a massive classics fan, and I've read/translated portions of the Aeneid (for school, not fun), but it seems like that work was only chosen because it's famous and old - not because this has anything to do with that myth.
This writing ain't great, but I've sure read far worse fake-smart trying-too-hard pieces. Usually, those sorts come off like they've got no real promise as writers—this, I dunno, it seems like the writer's fairly young, maybe five or ten years of refinement of discernment, taste, self-awareness, and audience empathy, and hell, they might be pretty good. The prose definitely doesn't stand up under the weight of all that pretension, but I'll be damned if doesn't, at times, almost make it. There are some promising elements on display.
Meanwhile, god damn, I wish HN would get half this riled up when much nastier things come across the site than some trust fund kid writing about their woodworking project. I mean, wow, this is a mean discussion, and I get the criticism of the piece, and even agree with much of it, but yikes.
[EDIT] That last bit, incidentally, is not a jab at you, automatoney.
yep - it's a bit hard to get past the writing in places: "It proffers an alternate computational reality." Sure?
I appreciate anyone experimenting with cool aesthetics, but this description ignores the enormous numbers of people building case mods, including many out of wood or unconventional materials.
And what an anticlimactic article. The only ugly piece of craft on this page is his "computer". It's useless too, which is fine, art can be useless, but I have a hard time seeing the esthetic value. In the eye of the beholder, sure. But it feels like my 5-year old having painted something in pre-school and showing it to me. Sure he's proud. Sure I'll praise him. But is it art? Well..
I wouldn't go that far, but the keyboard being such a core aspect of it but looking like a regular modern keyboard thrown in does kill a lot of the appeal.
I love this, even though it's not to my personal taste. For whatever reason, it invokes a similar feeling to seeing a Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh¹ for the first time.
Interesting and certainly unique, it's nice that they focus so much on the design process. And isn't that the point of this sort of creative project, to craft something unique that you yourself consider beautiful?
Personally, I'd like to make myself a Sandbender computer in the style of William Gibson's Idoru, but it would probably turn out much uglier than the sleek bulbous device which I imagine from the description:
>Chia looked down at her sandbenders. Turned off the red switch. "Coral," she said. "These are turquoise. The ones that look like ivory are the inside of a kind of nut. Renewable."
>"The rest is silver?"
>"Aluminum," Chia said. "They melt old cans they dig up on the beach, cast it in sand molds. These panels are micarta. That's linen with this resin in it."
Shame that PCBs are so rigid and rectangular, but you could probably fit a small SBC into a blob-like shell.
The problem is computers are an invention native to our post artisan, massanufacturing era. An artisan who makes a table, a gun, an 1800s cash register, crafts every part by hand. He hammers out the firing pin, he carves the tongues that hold the drawers together.
This "artisan computer" is just a case. Everything inside it was mass manufactured. It's veneer. It's wood and chrome switches to hide the truth.
There is room for compromise on this. You can create unique, beautiful, interesting computers with the fact that the components will be mostly.off the shelf parts. It's not going to be carved form wood and inlaid with gems. It's probably going to look like something out of Fallout.
I really hate how so many hold this awful 1800s baroque steampunk aesthetic as 'beautiful' and then lambast modern design as if it isn't.
I like minimalism, particularly the swiss school. The sense of peace and zen that comes from witnessing the beauty of a good minimalist work is exquisite on an entirely new level that garish and tacky ornamentation could never achieve.
Beauty might be in the eye of the beholder, but people should really keep to themselves about it. Because this guy's idea of 'beauty' is ugly AF to me
[+] [-] khochesh_kushat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctrlp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] felipemnoa|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sacnoradhq|3 years ago|reply
The design is problematic in that it promotes terrible posture. The screen angle is odd and doesn't appear to align with a user's field of vision. And it looks like a kit car that just isn't designed beautifully like a Fiero-Lambo.
EDIT: Ultima GTR is another example. An impressive vehicle except for the design.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
A "beautiful" computer could also be one that is invisible:
- Laser projection keyboard
- Motion tracking a-la Kinect
- VR a-la Oculus Pro
- Projector using a wall as a screen surface
There are many ways to challenge design. I don't see how this pushes the envelope of form and function to be noteworthy for design.
[+] [-] dghlsakjg|3 years ago|reply
Modern computers may not exude bespoke craftsmanship, but they certainly are designed with an eye towards aesthetics.
What he’s done is very cool though. I would love to see a diversity of form factors for desktop machines beyond rectangles.
[+] [-] shapefrog|3 years ago|reply
I like that car a lot - was pretty close to getting one many years ago - its the exterior though its not ... pretty. Design underneath - simple and elegant.
[+] [-] zaphod12|3 years ago|reply
I take issue with his characterization of japanese vs. western homes, though. Western homes are typically expected to be renovated over and over and last many many decades. Though the most modern ones may not last you 100, ask any buyer and they'll say they expect it to appreciate in value, be renovated and resold to someone else with no clear end date.
Most homes in japan depreciate and are torn down in 20-30 years. Buyers want new homes. https://www.archdaily.com/980830/built-to-not-last-the-japan...
yeah it doesn't jibe with a lot of folk's expectations...
[+] [-] khazhoux|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] syntheweave|3 years ago|reply
A beautiful computer, to me, is a saddle to ride on - neither too cheap to respect, nor too expensive to use. That is, it's something akin to a Framework laptop with some nice peripherals and desk accessories, or FPGA recreations of old hardware. The mechanical keyboard market gets this - and it deserves further equivalents in other aspects of I/O, in the circuit designs and software stack.
Who will make the first heirloom printer/scanner?
[+] [-] yetanotherloss|3 years ago|reply
I'd totally have torn down and replaced my house if that was something the homebuilding sector optimized for.
[+] [-] Gigachad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dale_glass|3 years ago|reply
People didn't go to the battlefield with some ridiculously ornate sword inlaid with gold and precious gems. That thing belonged to some rich nobleman and was an object of luxury. Though I imagine it could still cut if it came down to that, but that wasn't the main point of it, the point was showing how much money you had.
A sword in general wasn't what you battled with either, it's more of a backup weapon. But most people with a sword would have something very plain looking.
The average guy went to fight with something a lot more utilitarian looking, and simpler. They'd have spear consisting of a pointy metal tip on a wooden stick, because that's cheap and works great.
[+] [-] blagie|3 years ago|reply
"Cheap" wasn't always the major factor. Some spears were cheap, but others were pretty darned expensive. In wars -- where trained people fought in groups and formations -- spears just worked better than swords.
The Greek phalanx, the Roman pilum, the lances of the medieval period, early modern pike-and-shot, etc. all showed the effectiveness of a long sharp, pointy stick.
Swords have many niches, like closed-quarters combat in cities, terrain (e.g. forest or mountain battles), etc., but the spear almost always dominated for mainstream war.
[+] [-] tmtvl|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctrlp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waldothedog|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghostly_s|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sitzkrieg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fwlr|3 years ago|reply
Something I disagree with entirely on an aesthetic level is the use of wood in this project. I do appreciate that humans have evolved to appreciate interacting with wood, but (perhaps because of my background in metalworking shops) I think humans are also capable of instinctively appreciating the nobility of metal.
One of the main reasons I buy Apple laptops is they’re made from metal and glass. I’m also a fan of typewriters with metal, glass, or ceramic keycaps. If Apple made a laptop with non-plastic keycaps that would be my ideal machine. Even better if they would use steel instead of aluminum - they did this with the Pro series of the iPhone 14 and I appreciate it almost daily. A lot of my Apple loyalty actually comes from the fact that they seem to respect metal as a material in their design process much more than other companies.
My ideal desktop machine would probably be made from the exact same materials as a lathe or milling machine, even down to the absurdly thick enamel or epoxy paint in Machine Green.
[+] [-] detrites|3 years ago|reply
As at least some seem to exhibit, it is possible to criticise creativity without high-school level bullying.
Sometimes people read things like I've seen written here and get hit harder than anyone expects. If you've been close to the worst aftermath of such things you might think twice about who's reading what you wrote, and its impact.
Personally, what I didn't like about the article was the lack of photos of the final product - it looks really interesting, and I want to see more of it.
I hope the author, who seems based on username to likely also to be the OP, has a thicker skin than those here seeking to bruise it seem to think. They've no right to - and them assuming they do is the worst kind of entitlement.
[+] [-] ejfox|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netsharc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Karrot_Kream|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antibasilisk|3 years ago|reply
It's quite bothersome, and it often comes from people who supposedly pride themselves on being open-minded. As soon as you start writing in this way people will accuse you of 'trying to seem smarter than you are' and it seems to trigger some kind of persecution complex. It's like dude, maybe I just enjoy larping as a Victorian? Keep off my neck!
[+] [-] jdlshore|3 years ago|reply
Edit: Actually, having read the comments, I think a bunch of them just looked at the picture.
[+] [-] jensgk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bgoldste|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elzbardico|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] getlawgdon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geocrasher|3 years ago|reply
Let's not also forget that various companies have tried to make computers beautiful, or at least less ugly. Who can forget the swoopy-curvy-nearly-art-deco computer cases of the early 2000's? The iMac G3, the Compaq Presario's, and the other ones that tried to round out the corners of the beige boxes that we were all so used to by then?
[+] [-] bunabhucan|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rfwhyte|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sockaddr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] automatoney|3 years ago|reply
I feel this would also be suited by connecting the topic to trends in minimalism and maximalism. Also maybe a better comparison to the guns and swords (which were essentially accessories) would be to smartphones and the cases people use - it's a more similar comparison, although not relevant to the "building a computer" part.
[+] [-] automatoney|3 years ago|reply
The article leans heavily on traditionalist phrasings - "no one was lifting the most centrally important functional objects in our lives into the domain of beauty. The practice of these long-gone artisans had disappeared." And then tracing some etymology back to PIE and referring to that etymology as imparting "thousands of years of wisdom from the most successful cultures in history." onto a phrase is a statement that couldn't possibly be more Euro-centric (and linguistically ill-informed - almost every word has thousands of years of history).
"The process of 'men of strength, skill, and virtue using their hands to enforce their will on materials' should not be forgotten." feels really gross in a modern context - it's not too far off from complaining about "what happened to real men." as if the past was some glorious golden age (and has kind of imperialist vibes - why must men "enforce" their will on materials? What structure does "enforce" imply that "work with" does not?)
And then ending with a quote from The Aeneid is just... I don't know what the word is, pretentious? I'm a massive classics fan, and I've read/translated portions of the Aeneid (for school, not fun), but it seems like that work was only chosen because it's famous and old - not because this has anything to do with that myth.
[+] [-] yamtaddle|3 years ago|reply
Meanwhile, god damn, I wish HN would get half this riled up when much nastier things come across the site than some trust fund kid writing about their woodworking project. I mean, wow, this is a mean discussion, and I get the criticism of the piece, and even agree with much of it, but yikes.
[EDIT] That last bit, incidentally, is not a jab at you, automatoney.
[+] [-] etrautmann|3 years ago|reply
I appreciate anyone experimenting with cool aesthetics, but this description ignores the enormous numbers of people building case mods, including many out of wood or unconventional materials.
[+] [-] haweemwho|3 years ago|reply
And what an anticlimactic article. The only ugly piece of craft on this page is his "computer". It's useless too, which is fine, art can be useless, but I have a hard time seeing the esthetic value. In the eye of the beholder, sure. But it feels like my 5-year old having painted something in pre-school and showing it to me. Sure he's proud. Sure I'll praise him. But is it art? Well..
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] reiichiroh|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waboremo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CharlesW|3 years ago|reply
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twentieth_Anniversary_Macintos...
[+] [-] et-al|3 years ago|reply
If one's going in the direction of ostentatiousness, I feel like it needs some ivory inlays to break up the monotony.
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|3 years ago|reply
Just google "Steampunk Computer"
[+] [-] getlawgdon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tiedieconderoga|3 years ago|reply
Personally, I'd like to make myself a Sandbender computer in the style of William Gibson's Idoru, but it would probably turn out much uglier than the sleek bulbous device which I imagine from the description:
>Chia looked down at her sandbenders. Turned off the red switch. "Coral," she said. "These are turquoise. The ones that look like ivory are the inside of a kind of nut. Renewable."
>"The rest is silver?"
>"Aluminum," Chia said. "They melt old cans they dig up on the beach, cast it in sand molds. These panels are micarta. That's linen with this resin in it."
Shame that PCBs are so rigid and rectangular, but you could probably fit a small SBC into a blob-like shell.
[+] [-] friend_and_foe|3 years ago|reply
This "artisan computer" is just a case. Everything inside it was mass manufactured. It's veneer. It's wood and chrome switches to hide the truth.
There is room for compromise on this. You can create unique, beautiful, interesting computers with the fact that the components will be mostly.off the shelf parts. It's not going to be carved form wood and inlaid with gems. It's probably going to look like something out of Fallout.
[+] [-] pdntspa|3 years ago|reply
I like minimalism, particularly the swiss school. The sense of peace and zen that comes from witnessing the beauty of a good minimalist work is exquisite on an entirely new level that garish and tacky ornamentation could never achieve.
Beauty might be in the eye of the beholder, but people should really keep to themselves about it. Because this guy's idea of 'beauty' is ugly AF to me