5 ms·

I completely agree. The design of a hammer hasn't changed much in centuries because it's already designed well for its purpose. Same thing with sharks, I don't

by burnte 6y ago

I completely agree. The design of a hammer hasn't changed much in centuries because it's already designed well for its purpose. Same thing with sharks, I don't hear biologists say "there hasn't been much innovation in sharks for millions of years."

suyash 6y ago
I consider myself one of those people who would comment about the design of hammer being stuck and more people should, that is how we innovate. The real world is always changing and evolving with time, so are technologies be it for computers - UI that allowed for the desktop GUI paradigm in the 90's to today where Alexa, Siri can help us do lot of those tasks just by commanding over voice. We need to certainly move on and innovate the user interface for desktop GUI or for other devices.
- wruza 6y ago
  What is new proposal for a hammer, may I ask?
  - blinkeer 6y ago
    Pneumatic press, nail gun, screwdriver, impact wrench, seems like these could work, while maybe not a direct dirivative. Some things persist, and are stable as others have noted. A cool thing about innovation is that the ideas are often things people didn't know they wanted until they see it.
    - wruza 6y ago
      These are not improvements of a hammer design, but completely different things. Screws do not play well with deformation, but let’s ignore that: you’ll probably have both a hammer and one of these things in your toolbox, and you’ll miss a hammer if it’s not there. It is a general-purpose hit-force tool for hitting anything, not only nails. A better design for a hammer itself could include a claw or new hitting surface geometry, handle amortizer and so on, which are successfully done in variety, despite gp thinks that it’s “stuck”. First, it’s not, we just waited for better materials, advanced tasks, etc. Second, it is not much to do with hitting something with inertia-accumulated force. Anyway my point is that if you change all hammers in the world overnight (like software does) you better have done a good job of century-testing your changes in all situations. If your reasoning is just “it gets old”, well, this site’s rules do not allow me to express what I think of that.
  - cameron_b 6y ago
    Instead of whamming in a pointy cylinder, that stress and vibration might work it out back against the force of our whamming, we TWIST in a similar bit of hardware, only we wrap an inclined plane around the cylinder so that it cuts as we twist, making a walled channel that resists working out backwards under vibration.
    - na85 6y ago
      Witty, but nails and screws serve different use-cases. Nails have better shear properties, for example.
  - suyash 6y ago
    Ok, let's play do this imaginative exercise - Hammer looks simple but actually if you're few inches off while slamming it down, you can seriously injure yourself if you're holding the nails with your other hand. I'm sure we have all experienced that. How about a sensor that always drives the motion in the right location, it can be done by having sensors that feel your muscle twitches and angle then recalibrate using camera to the right angle and nails it in (pun intended). Another idea is a Swiss army knife but something that combines hammer, screwdriver, wrench into one design design offsetting the need to by separate tools.
    - anyfoo 6y ago
      This is a parody, right?
    - vvanders 6y ago
      Or you could just put a magnet and a notch on the top of the hammer[1]. [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=hammer+nail+magnet&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=hammer+nail+magnet&iax=imag...
      - thrower123 6y ago
        I've never yet managed to use that thing without pinging the nail across the room. Which does explain why OSHA says you have to wear safety glasses when nailing.
    - AngryData 6y ago
      Many framing hammers have a nail set on top which is a t-shaped depression with a magnet in it to hold a nail. Set the nail on top, swing and set the nail int he wood up to half depth, then hit it two more times to finish nailing.
      - wruza 6y ago
        Idk what professional woodworkers do today, but I just hit very easy for first few times (bait? non-native speaker) and then the nail holds with its “spearhead”, so you can remove your hand away from the danger zone. Or use pliers. I agree with the commenter above, hitting fingers is frankly a noob’s issue that is completely avoidable without rocket tech.
  - catchmeifyoucan 6y ago
    But can’t you just question the need for a hammer in the first place. You don’t need one if you don’t have nails. You don’t need nails if you find a better way to fasten things. That’s the job to be done. Soo instead of a better hammer, let’s get rid of the nails. And with it goes the entire industry.
    - wruza 6y ago
      But why? Hammer/nail is essential, cheap and natural for crafting, and honestly I do programming in a somewhat handcrafted way, i.e. I don’t need sophisticated stock market frameworks for e.g. sending a request for quotelevel2. And many people seem to do that, that’s why deprecating ‘request’ instantly gave birth/popularity to ‘got’. There is no reason to complicate simple, battle-tested things until there really, really is a big reason. There is no such thing as “new”, until your task is “new” in any way. Using new things for the same old purpose is called fast fashion.
- dmitriid 6y ago
  > where Alexa, Siri can help us do lot of those tasks just by commanding over voice How "many of these tasks" can they reliably help you do? They screw up even the simplest tasks like setting a timer.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
brownjohnf 6y ago
The design of a hammer has actually changed substantially over time. More recently, there's been a trend towards specialization in the framing hammer alone. 100 years ago most hammers looked like the classic hammers I remember from childhood: relatively small, sharply curved claws, a smooth face. As production framing exploded in the US after WWII, framers were pushing for more efficiency. The framing hammer got heavier with a longer handle, broader face, straighter claw, and waffled face better for gripping nails (also why most loose framing nails have a cross-hatched pattern: so they can mate with the hammer face). From there, materials science really kicked in, and we saw steel-handled models, followed by fiberglass and other composite handles. The latest developments (that I'm aware of) are products like the Stiletto (http://www.stiletto.com/p-80-ti-bone-iii-hammer-with-milled-face-and-18in-curved-handle.aspx http://www.stiletto.com/p-80-ti-bone-iii-hammer-with-milled-...), which leverage materials like titanium to reduce weight while maintaining driving power, and include a replaceable steel face to prolong hammer life and allow using different faces for different applications. Modern hammers with advanced material properties and functions can cost hundreds of dollars, but deliver much higher efficiency with less fatigue and a longer life. I compare that with the Sears hammer in my grandfather's garage and see a whole new generation of evolution. There's a great article about hammer history at Fine Homebuilding: https://www.finehomebuilding.com/project-guides/framing/hammered-the-history-of-hammer-design https://www.finehomebuilding.com/project-guides/framing/hamm... edited: Fix link formatting.
- Osiris 6y ago
  The think this supports the OPs argument that we're refining, not inventing. Everything you've said here is about refining, it's not a completely new way to attach materials together.
  - brownjohnf 6y ago
    Yeah, probably should have clarified that I intended no comment on the OPs comment about innovation in computer UI. Just wanted to point out that there's actually a surprising amount of evolution in design of the hammer. Something that seems to be so simple, and has existed for thousands of years, can still be made better. I'm not a professional carpenter, but I've used a hammer a lot to do things like framing, and can confirm that many of these innovations are meaningful in function, not just form.
Nition 6y ago
On the other hand, sometimes it's just that people get so used to something, they don't take a close look at how it could be improved. Bows stayed much the same for centuries until the compound bow appeared in the 1960s.
neokrish 6y ago
The hammer analogy has its limitations here. When the task is simple (hitting a nail), a simple and good design lasts. When the task(s) is/are complicated, depend on context, are tied to human understanding, knowledge or training in using machines, then design could benefit from both refinements as well as radical and creative thinking. I also don’t think that just because we have a good design, even for a hammer, we should stop people from challenging norms and thinking in bold ways. Here’s a contrasting example to hammers - chairs. The objective is simple, to sit on it. The design innovations still continue to this day, on how a chair can be structured. There have been interpretations of chairs that challenge the very notion that chairs need legs.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  And yet being a shorter person I still have to hunt far and wide for a chair that doesn't leave my feet dangling or cut into my thighs. Lately I've taken to cutting things down or upcycling to get a reasonable fit.
laurent92 6y ago
It’s sad that things got so interconnected that I expect hammers to require security updates any time now. I hope there will be a counter-trend. It is feature bloat scaled to the extreme, at industry level.
Turing_Machine 6y ago
Even if that were true (which it doesn't appear to be... see other comments) I'm not sure that would apply to a field as broad, and as new, as software. Software does radically different things, things as different as, say, hammering and opening cans. It is difficult for me to believe that the WIMP interface as we know it is actually optimal for all those different software tasks. I mean, sure, you could probably open a can with a claw hammer, if you used some care, and you might be even able to drive a nail with a can opener. You wouldn't want to, though. Note that we still drive cars by using steering wheels and foot pedals. We haven't gone to some "click on the menu item" interface, even though such an interface could easily be written for many modern cars. Put me in the camp that believes that UIs are stuck in a rut, and need to be fundamentally rethought. Raskin's humane interface had some interesting ideas, though it does not seem to have caught on.
hhas01 6y ago
Nailgun.

by burnte 6y ago

suyash 6y ago

I consider myself one of those people who would comment about the design of hammer being stuck and more people should, that is how we innovate. The real world is always changing and evolving with time, so are technologies be it for computers - UI that allowed for the desktop GUI paradigm in the 90's to today where Alexa, Siri can help us do lot of those tasks just by commanding over voice. We need to certainly move on and innovate the user interface for desktop GUI or for other devices.

wruza 6y ago
What is new proposal for a hammer, may I ask?
- blinkeer 6y ago
  Pneumatic press, nail gun, screwdriver, impact wrench, seems like these could work, while maybe not a direct dirivative. Some things persist, and are stable as others have noted. A cool thing about innovation is that the ideas are often things people didn't know they wanted until they see it.
  - wruza 6y ago
    These are not improvements of a hammer design, but completely different things. Screws do not play well with deformation, but let’s ignore that: you’ll probably have both a hammer and one of these things in your toolbox, and you’ll miss a hammer if it’s not there. It is a general-purpose hit-force tool for hitting anything, not only nails. A better design for a hammer itself could include a claw or new hitting surface geometry, handle amortizer and so on, which are successfully done in variety, despite gp thinks that it’s “stuck”. First, it’s not, we just waited for better materials, advanced tasks, etc. Second, it is not much to do with hitting something with inertia-accumulated force. Anyway my point is that if you change all hammers in the world overnight (like software does) you better have done a good job of century-testing your changes in all situations. If your reasoning is just “it gets old”, well, this site’s rules do not allow me to express what I think of that.
- cameron_b 6y ago
  Instead of whamming in a pointy cylinder, that stress and vibration might work it out back against the force of our whamming, we TWIST in a similar bit of hardware, only we wrap an inclined plane around the cylinder so that it cuts as we twist, making a walled channel that resists working out backwards under vibration.
  - na85 6y ago
    Witty, but nails and screws serve different use-cases. Nails have better shear properties, for example.
- suyash 6y ago
  Ok, let's play do this imaginative exercise - Hammer looks simple but actually if you're few inches off while slamming it down, you can seriously injure yourself if you're holding the nails with your other hand. I'm sure we have all experienced that. How about a sensor that always drives the motion in the right location, it can be done by having sensors that feel your muscle twitches and angle then recalibrate using camera to the right angle and nails it in (pun intended). Another idea is a Swiss army knife but something that combines hammer, screwdriver, wrench into one design design offsetting the need to by separate tools.
  - anyfoo 6y ago
    This is a parody, right?
  - vvanders 6y ago
    Or you could just put a magnet and a notch on the top of the hammer[1]. [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=hammer+nail+magnet&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=hammer+nail+magnet&iax=imag...
    - thrower123 6y ago
      I've never yet managed to use that thing without pinging the nail across the room. Which does explain why OSHA says you have to wear safety glasses when nailing.
  - AngryData 6y ago
    Many framing hammers have a nail set on top which is a t-shaped depression with a magnet in it to hold a nail. Set the nail on top, swing and set the nail int he wood up to half depth, then hit it two more times to finish nailing.
    - wruza 6y ago
      Idk what professional woodworkers do today, but I just hit very easy for first few times (bait? non-native speaker) and then the nail holds with its “spearhead”, so you can remove your hand away from the danger zone. Or use pliers. I agree with the commenter above, hitting fingers is frankly a noob’s issue that is completely avoidable without rocket tech.
- catchmeifyoucan 6y ago
  But can’t you just question the need for a hammer in the first place. You don’t need one if you don’t have nails. You don’t need nails if you find a better way to fasten things. That’s the job to be done. Soo instead of a better hammer, let’s get rid of the nails. And with it goes the entire industry.
  - wruza 6y ago
    But why? Hammer/nail is essential, cheap and natural for crafting, and honestly I do programming in a somewhat handcrafted way, i.e. I don’t need sophisticated stock market frameworks for e.g. sending a request for quotelevel2. And many people seem to do that, that’s why deprecating ‘request’ instantly gave birth/popularity to ‘got’. There is no reason to complicate simple, battle-tested things until there really, really is a big reason. There is no such thing as “new”, until your task is “new” in any way. Using new things for the same old purpose is called fast fashion.
dmitriid 6y ago
> where Alexa, Siri can help us do lot of those tasks just by commanding over voice How "many of these tasks" can they reliably help you do? They screw up even the simplest tasks like setting a timer.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

brownjohnf 6y ago

The design of a hammer has actually changed substantially over time. More recently, there's been a trend towards specialization in the framing hammer alone. 100 years ago most hammers looked like the classic hammers I remember from childhood: relatively small, sharply curved claws, a smooth face. As production framing exploded in the US after WWII, framers were pushing for more efficiency. The framing hammer got heavier with a longer handle, broader face, straighter claw, and waffled face better for gripping nails (also why most loose framing nails have a cross-hatched pattern: so they can mate with the hammer face). From there, materials science really kicked in, and we saw steel-handled models, followed by fiberglass and other composite handles. The latest developments (that I'm aware of) are products like the Stiletto (http://www.stiletto.com/p-80-ti-bone-iii-hammer-with-milled-face-and-18in-curved-handle.aspx http://www.stiletto.com/p-80-ti-bone-iii-hammer-with-milled-...), which leverage materials like titanium to reduce weight while maintaining driving power, and include a replaceable steel face to prolong hammer life and allow using different faces for different applications. Modern hammers with advanced material properties and functions can cost hundreds of dollars, but deliver much higher efficiency with less fatigue and a longer life. I compare that with the Sears hammer in my grandfather's garage and see a whole new generation of evolution. There's a great article about hammer history at Fine Homebuilding: https://www.finehomebuilding.com/project-guides/framing/hammered-the-history-of-hammer-design https://www.finehomebuilding.com/project-guides/framing/hamm... edited: Fix link formatting.

Osiris 6y ago
The think this supports the OPs argument that we're refining, not inventing. Everything you've said here is about refining, it's not a completely new way to attach materials together.
- brownjohnf 6y ago
  Yeah, probably should have clarified that I intended no comment on the OPs comment about innovation in computer UI. Just wanted to point out that there's actually a surprising amount of evolution in design of the hammer. Something that seems to be so simple, and has existed for thousands of years, can still be made better. I'm not a professional carpenter, but I've used a hammer a lot to do things like framing, and can confirm that many of these innovations are meaningful in function, not just form.

Nition 6y ago

On the other hand, sometimes it's just that people get so used to something, they don't take a close look at how it could be improved. Bows stayed much the same for centuries until the compound bow appeared in the 1960s.

neokrish 6y ago

The hammer analogy has its limitations here. When the task is simple (hitting a nail), a simple and good design lasts. When the task(s) is/are complicated, depend on context, are tied to human understanding, knowledge or training in using machines, then design could benefit from both refinements as well as radical and creative thinking. I also don’t think that just because we have a good design, even for a hammer, we should stop people from challenging norms and thinking in bold ways. Here’s a contrasting example to hammers - chairs. The objective is simple, to sit on it. The design innovations still continue to this day, on how a chair can be structured. There have been interpretations of chairs that challenge the very notion that chairs need legs.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
And yet being a shorter person I still have to hunt far and wide for a chair that doesn't leave my feet dangling or cut into my thighs. Lately I've taken to cutting things down or upcycling to get a reasonable fit.

laurent92 6y ago

It’s sad that things got so interconnected that I expect hammers to require security updates any time now. I hope there will be a counter-trend. It is feature bloat scaled to the extreme, at industry level.

Turing_Machine 6y ago

Even if that were true (which it doesn't appear to be... see other comments) I'm not sure that would apply to a field as broad, and as new, as software. Software does radically different things, things as different as, say, hammering and opening cans. It is difficult for me to believe that the WIMP interface as we know it is actually optimal for all those different software tasks. I mean, sure, you could probably open a can with a claw hammer, if you used some care, and you might be even able to drive a nail with a can opener. You wouldn't want to, though. Note that we still drive cars by using steering wheels and foot pedals. We haven't gone to some "click on the menu item" interface, even though such an interface could easily be written for many modern cars. Put me in the camp that believes that UIs are stuck in a rut, and need to be fundamentally rethought. Raskin's humane interface had some interesting ideas, though it does not seem to have caught on.

hhas01 6y ago

Nailgun.