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Exactly. If you were to take one of Europe's cathedrals, you can spend 10 years looking at decorations and statues and still discover new things, scenes and det

Exactly. If you were to take one of Europe's cathedrals, you can spend 10 years looking at decorations and statues and still discover new things, scenes and details. Every last little detail is thought out, and contributes to the whole of the effect. They also generally took a fraction of the resources of an entire city for 2-8 centuries to build.

js8 6y ago
> They also generally took a fraction of the resources of an entire city for 2-8 centuries to build. I think this is an interesting point. The cathedrals were built to last, which lessened the cost of all the art. Today things are built not to last, but to be consumed, and therefore it makes sense to omit expensive (and opinionated) design. I wish open source would lead this way. Instead of emulating the commercial companies and trying to change graphics every couple years into minimalism, cumulatively build up more intricate (and visually interesting) design. It looked like this will happen by late 90s (with all the different graphic themes and such) but then it took a turn.
- throwanem 6y ago
  I don't know why you're getting downvoted. What the "vernacular" style of the early web lacked for intentionality, it more than made up for in variety and sheer élan. Whether we'd live in a better world today had that vernacular not been erased in practice, I don't know that anyone can say one way or the other, but there's no harm in thinking about how that world might be different from the one we have today.
- bombcar 6y ago
  There does exist open-source software of that type (TeX for example) but amusingly it's not much used (the average person using TeX is using LaTeX on pdfTeX which, while based on the TeX source code, isn't TeX).
tinus_hn 6y ago
It’s the old Demotivator poster! You can do anything you set your mind to when you have vision, determination, and an endless supply of expendable labor. https://despair.com/collections/demotivators/products/achievement https://despair.com/collections/demotivators/products/achiev...

js8 6y ago

> They also generally took a fraction of the resources of an entire city for 2-8 centuries to build. I think this is an interesting point. The cathedrals were built to last, which lessened the cost of all the art. Today things are built not to last, but to be consumed, and therefore it makes sense to omit expensive (and opinionated) design. I wish open source would lead this way. Instead of emulating the commercial companies and trying to change graphics every couple years into minimalism, cumulatively build up more intricate (and visually interesting) design. It looked like this will happen by late 90s (with all the different graphic themes and such) but then it took a turn.

throwanem 6y ago
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. What the "vernacular" style of the early web lacked for intentionality, it more than made up for in variety and sheer élan. Whether we'd live in a better world today had that vernacular not been erased in practice, I don't know that anyone can say one way or the other, but there's no harm in thinking about how that world might be different from the one we have today.
bombcar 6y ago
There does exist open-source software of that type (TeX for example) but amusingly it's not much used (the average person using TeX is using LaTeX on pdfTeX which, while based on the TeX source code, isn't TeX).

tinus_hn 6y ago

It’s the old Demotivator poster! You can do anything you set your mind to when you have vision, determination, and an endless supply of expendable labor. https://despair.com/collections/demotivators/products/achievement https://despair.com/collections/demotivators/products/achiev...