[lubesGordi]

I don't know man. I'm writing a flashcard app, and I like it. It makes me happy and it works the way I want. Exactly how I want. BC I could never get into quizlet. Whatever. Maybe others will like it, maybe not, I don't care.

Taste is subjective. Having 1 million todo apps, great. Maybe someone I know will find one they like and tell me about it. Maybe I'll find one that doesn't suck. Maybe I'll just make my own.

One thing I won't do though, is complain about how there's now 1 million todo apps that aren't up to my standards. Everyone being able to make their own apps however they want is a beautiful thing.

[vunderba]

> Taste is subjective.

If I spend twenty years subsisting solely on a high sodium cup-of-noodle diet, get severely impaired under the influence of everclear while trying to use a straight edge razor for the first time, hang up a white canvas, and spin around like a whirling dervish yard sprinkler and then display this finished piece next to Jan van Eyck’s The Last Judgement - we’ve long since left the realm of pure subjectivity.

I'm being silly but I've always thought that the "taste is subjective" argument is not very compelling. Taste, if not entirely objective, at least can be measured in demographic thermoclines.

[wafflebot]

I agree! Taste is downstream of such things as design principles which can be described in objective terms.

Taste is not synonymous with personal preferences, otherwise we wouldn't describe some taste as "bad taste" or "poor taste." Rather, to me, one's taste refers to one's power of discernment as to what is good.

We can enjoy cup-of-noodles without conflating our enjoyment as being good taste. I like a lot of things that are fairly trash.

[mecsred]

That would honestly be an incredible performance art piece, like a distilled waste of a human life just to prove a point. Then even after all that you could ask the question "Is the art inferior, did it prove the point effectively.". I think there's a real argument to be made that it didn't, becuase just having the argument surfaces some very interesting points about worth.

[fluoridation]

>I'm being silly but I've always thought that the "taste is subjective" argument is not very compelling. Taste, if not entirely objective, at least can be measured in demographic thermoclines.

Okay, but so what? "Taste is subjective" is meant to defend the existence of some thing. "Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it shouldn't exist (or shouldn't be the way it is)." Are you therefore saying the opposite? "Because most people don't like it, it shouldn't exist"?

[ianbutler]

That's awesome! I love that energy, it's the opposite of the energy I was trying to talk about in the post actually, you're not trying to tell me why your app is the best thing in the world and spamming it everywhere when it has nothing to offer me or other people, and having not considered other people.

[tptacek]

Where by "spamming" you mean daring to post it to HN under a "Show HN" title.

[selridge]

Why don’t you tell them that they have no taste?

Seems to be what the essay implies.

[Aerroon]

I've done the same thing with a todo app.

I find that a convenient UI becomes the most important aspect of some applications (to-do list, alarm clocks etc). Getting it to be exactly the way I like it is a benefit by itself.

I've been thinking of making a note taking app for my phone as well. The 10 or so that I've used all have had issues that made me not like them for one reason or another. Eg 16k char limit per note, no searching inside a note, broken bullet lists, long startup time etc.

[m3kw9]

With millions of todo apps released daily, it boils down to marketing which have a taste component.

[throw4847285]

Taste is not subjective. It's intersubjective. Subjective experiences are totally located within a particular subject. For example, "I'm hungry. I'm tired. I'm sad."

Judgements of taste, on the other hand, implicate all other humans when they are made. They implicitly demand consensus in a way that is unlike any other subjective claims. This is the only possible explanation for why people will in one breath say, "it's a matter of taste, it's all subjective" and then argue about whether or not The Last Jedi is a good Star Wars movie for hours, if not days, on end. Because the truth is, we are constantly seeking consensus and we usually resort to "that's just your opinion man" when we give up and disengage. But we don't believe that, not really.

According to Kant, "a judgment of taste involves the consciousness that all interest is kept out of it, it must also involve a claim to being valid for everyone, but without having a universality based on concepts. In other words, a judgment of taste must involve a claim to subjective universality." Unfortunately, it's Kant we're talking about, so trying to understand what he meant by subjective universality is a huge headache. Still, his reasoning reflects the way people actually talk about taste better than anybody else I've read.

[selridge]

I think you can lead yourself astray imagining that there’s a big difference between subjectivity and intersubjectivity. One is just a college educated term for the other.

More importantly, I think that enough time has passed that we can critique poor old Kant on this matter. When he says the taste has no interest in something what he is really implicitly describing is that taste is the province of rich people. If one has to strive or worry or self promote or anything like that, with regard to an aesthetic decision, it is easy to mark as tasteless. In most cases, the people with access to the kinds of habits that allow them to act in matters of aesthetic without interest are rich.

The main reason people drive themselves in circles, talking about taste and subjectivity, and college-educated words for subjectivity is because we don’t want to admit that it is bound up in class and upbringing. That and not the passage of time is why it is so hard to understand Kant on this matter. He’s describing a fiction that we agreed upon so that we didn’t have to talk about the influence of money.

[zoogeny]

> we are constantly seeking consensus

I disagree, it seems to me that most people are seeking validation. In that sense, we don't want some global consensus, but a consensus within a specifically chosen group that proves our membership.

[armchairhacker]

Ok, but there's no consensus that AI is bad taste. For example, I believe that AI art looks bad, but many boomers on Facebook apparently love it.

> "that's just your opinion man"...But we don't believe that

Why not? Many people have opinions I strongly disagree with, but I don't question that they actually have the opinion.

[j45]

Software is for the end user, not for critics and opinionists, they are welcome to create software too.

There are so many problems that people have that have never been important enough to get solutions, that now can.

It's less about taste and more about experience and outcomes now.

The way we built software in the past, including the processes, ceremonies

[wseqyrku]

> Taste is subjective.

I would like to offer a counterexample: iPhone, when it first came out anyways. Tasteful design is rather so obvious that when you see it you'd say yes, this is what anyone would expect from a "phone". That doesn't seem to be so subjective.

[plorkyeran]

That was not at all the universal response to the iphone. http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone is a (nsfw) contemporary article that I agreed with at the time, and I knew a decent number of people who got an early iphone and then switched back to a blackberry.

[sarchertech]

Except for all the people who used it and realized they hate touch screens for typing.

[moritzwarhier]

> It makes me happy and it works the way I want. Exactly how I want.

(emphasis mine)

Sounds like (good) taste to me!

Like you mentioned, ofc nobody wants ugliness.

But "good taste" in software can mean things that are not just decoration. And presentation is not irrelevant because it is our interface to any software.

It's far more than "frontend" or even "how things look like".

Words like "user story" are made from grains of truth!

[verdverm]

> One thing I won't do though, is complain about how there's now 1 million todo apps that aren't up to my standards.

HN is generally considered a filter in industry, or a place to launch and make a hot start. The author is making their comments from the context of Show HN, where we expect some self-filtering, for quality and appropriateness.

What we see in Show HN the last few weeks is slop, submissions where the time from first commit to posting on HN is less than an hour. I've been posting some selections to Bluesky. The fastest I've seen so far is 25m [1]

I fully agree with everything you said and everything the author said. The two are not mutually exclusive.

[1] https://bsky.app/profile/verdverm.com/post/3mf2hygnbkc2o

[m3kw9]

Taste in the public, means how others perceive it, not totally yourself only. Have good taste for yourself isn't what is being talked about here. It is subjective but the public component and meeting the trend then leading it without too much shock is tough. Copying can be tasteful, you need to know what's good to copy, but there is no wow factor.

[bartread]

I can’t actually get to the article on the WiFi network I’m on but when I see “No skill. No taste.” you don’t sound like the butt of that punchline. Clearly you at least have skill, and I’m in no position to judge your taste.

The people I have a problem with are the ones who have neither but nonetheless find their ways into positions of power and influence where they proceed to make everyone else’s lives varying degrees of miserable.

OTOH I have huge respect for anyone who makes their thing for their own satisfaction.

[AntiDyatlov]

> Everyone being able to make their own apps however they want is a beautiful

No. Silence is better than noise.

[benhurmarcel]

When somebody generates an app but doesn’t share it, does it make a noise?

[selridge]

Then put a sock in it