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> You might as well test a French Cuisine Chef on how well his Chinese cooking is. A way more apt comparison would be evaluating him on his knive sharpening sk
by endymi0n 5y ago
> You might as well test a French Cuisine Chef on how well his Chinese cooking is.
A way more apt comparison would be evaluating him on his knive sharpening skills.
- ksdale 5y agoAs someone who knows nothing about being a professional chef, it surprises me to discover that a professional chef wouldn't be very comfortable sharpening knives!
- jonny_eh 5y agoAnd if they couldn't sharpen a knife? Would you still trust them to cook a 5 course dinner?
- jedberg 5y agoSure. Just like I trust race car drivers to drive even though they don't know how to fix the car. As long as they understand the basics of how the car parts interact, they'll be just fine driving it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- OJFord 5y agoBut in practice, a good one probably won't let anyone else sharpen their knives, nevermind be unable to do it. It'd be a bit like 'someone else has set up a software development environment for you, now write some code' I suppose.
- dfadsadsf 5y agoGood race car drivers actually know how car works and I bet can fix many things. Race car drivers take the car to the limit and understanding how car works is competitive advantage - they can help mechanics tune the car, can diagnose problems that show up only at high speed, understand pro/cons of different suspesions and how they work, etc. On the other hand typical Uber driver does not need to know anything about the car other than what pedals are for and you turn the wheel to steer. If he tries to take the car to the limit, he probably gets 1 star rating from scared passenger. No need to know how car works. You decide whether Google engineers are more like race car drivers or Uber drivers.
- walshemj 5y agoBut they probably don't have a MSc like lot of F1 mechanics do.
- Elof 5y agoAs someone who has worked in professional kitchens, I can say that any professional chef that isn't comfortable sharpening their own knives isn't there because they love cooking. All of the ones I know take great pride in their knives.
- Elof 5y agoI think a more apt comparison would be to tell a classically trained English speaking chef to write out obscure recipes in French
- ljm 5y agoThe HN Law of Analogical Accuracy: for each attempt at an analogy, an attempt at a more accurate yet more abstract analogy exists in a reply.
- FridgeSeal 5y agoIf it continues long enough, so we eventually reach a point where the original situation is used as the analogy?
- quacked 5y agoHilarious. "... Okay, but this is more like if instead of on a cruise ship in Borneo, the monkey is a guy at an engineering interview who only has JavaScript on his resume, and the recruiter is making him implement linked lists in C."
- rixed 5y agoIt actually happened already, right down below: > It'd be a bit like 'someone else has set up a software development environment for you, now write some code' I suppose.
- ljm 5y agoIt just goes round in circles for eternity; the never-ending search for the Aptest of Comparisons.
- djrogers 5y agoErr, no. Being able to sharpen one’s own knives is a basic skill that every professional chef learns early. Having a sharp knife isn’t an ego-driven showoff move, it’s critically important.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dymk 5y agoI would not trust somebody who calls themselves a professional chef if they couldn't sharpen a knife.