7 ms·

Awesome but Useless

226 points by idan 15y ago

edw519 15y ago
Love the title! Sadly, it describes so much these days. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a hacker at heart and love to get under the hood, pull things apart, and put them back together. But the more I do this, the more I hear this little voice in my head say, "Wait a minute. Sure it's cool, but what's the point?" I have started using an approach that satisfies both my need to hack and my desire to be useful: I try to hack not the stuff that I find interesting, but that which my customers do. It took a little while to get used to (who cares about past due orders when I could be playing with HTML5?), but I have been pleasantly surprised. Grokking someone else's stuff may not lead to many happy dances, but it sure is fun watching someone with money to spend do a happy dance of their own.
- the_mitsuhiko 15y ago
  > "Wait a minute. Sure it's cool, but what's the point?" Learning.
  - llambda 15y ago
    > Learning. Exactly. And just to expand on this a bit, the process and resulting value of an experience should not be discounted. This is the foci of experiential learning. I can only speak for myself here, but the way I've learned best has always been by getting into something and doing it! Not always successfully, but rarely without gaining some kind of knowledge in the process. Importantly, for me, an important aspect of this has always been because it was "cool" to me. It it weren't...I'd probably lose my focus or quickly get bored.
  - cookiecaper 15y ago
    >Learning Learning is of course awesome. It's the entire point of life. We are all here to learn. But, excessively doing things solely for the sake of "learning" is actually doing a disservice to yourself. You should do things with tangible applications to real people besides yourself, too. There are a lot of preliminary or experimental avenues to explore, but once you find a handful with promise, my advice would be to try to follow those more deeply and apply the principles you learned to something with direct applicability. What you'll find is that by turning an experiment into a product, you've actually learned a lot more than you ever thought that little idea could yield up. You'll gain not only depth but also breadth as you explore the implications of that product in various fields, gauge peers' reactions to the product and marketing, and attempt to develop your idea into a repeatable, profitable boon. Tinkering is really important for a lot of reasons, but endless, exclusive tinkering results in a very superficial knowledgebase. I recommend that everyone follow several of their promises tinkers down the rabbit hole and see what comes out of it. I recognize that this takes effort and commitment, but I think you'll often be surprised at the results.
    - kstenerud 15y ago
      If it had a reason it wouldn't be a hobby.
      - cookiecaper 15y ago
        That makes no sense to me. Is there some obligation that all hobbies be useless? One of my hobbies is contributing to open-source software. That's useful, right?
        cobrausn 15y ago
        As my fiance is so fond of telling me when I say "I'm off to do some work!" when going to work on my programming side projects (which includes open source development with plans for future closed source commercial projects as well), she replies "Until it makes us any money, it's just a hobby. Have fun." Ah, good times.
        jodrellblank 15y ago
        Ask her if she thinks that way about your marriage.
        georgemcbay 15y ago
        Marriage makes you money (via economies of scale and tax breaks).
        cobrausn 15y ago
        She worked and paid our rent and grocery bills while I finished up my CS degree. She can call it whatever she wants. :-)
        Confusion 15y ago
        A => B /= ~B => ~A
        15y ago
  - BCM43 15y ago
    Fun? Why do you go on walks? Read fiction books? Hang out with friends? I think one of the ruts a lot of hackers (myself included) can fall into is thinking that everything that they do needs to have a point to it that furthers some long term goal. Somethings can be done just because you want to.
samarudge 15y ago
"Candy doesn't have to have a point, that's why it's candy"
bg182 15y ago
I'm working on a startup. My to-do list accumulates tasks faster than I can take items off it. In fact, between starred emails, pen & paper, smartphone apps, web to-dos etc I'm accumulating to-do lists faster than I'm getting through them. I sleep 2 or 3 hours a night. I have no time for friends and my girlfriend is mad at me. I'm in a constant state of stress and anxiety. I can't figure out if I'm on the verge of success or a good for nothing mess. Do I really have time for AwesomeButUseless.com? Why, of course I do :)
- Swizec 15y ago
  If you're busy, you are very likely doing it wrong -> http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/11/11/if-youre-busy-youre-doing-something-wrong-the-surprisingly-relaxed-lives-of-elite-achievers/ http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/11/11/if-youre-busy-youre-do... I was a lot like you once, until I suddenly realized that taking a step back every now and then actually brings a net positive in productivity because a lot of the time when you're busy and stressed what is actually happening is you're just doing work but not getting things done. My suggestion to you: take a look at your todo's, delete everything that's been there for more than two weeks. Then delete everything where people don't die if you do it tomorrow instead of today. Or, you know, completely disregard this comment, get back to your life, and watch yourself burn out faster than celluloid film.
  - bg182 15y ago
    Well, my comments above were meant as a joke. Mostly. Good article. Of course not all work that I do is the productive, or the so-called 'deliberate practice' kind. As referenced by the fact that I'm following up to my own comments on Hacker News. However an important difference between running a startup and playing a musical instrument is that I'd argue its a lot harder to know what the really effective work is, which means you'll generally have to try a few more things. No, I'm not quite as bad as the charicature I've described above. I've found that doing a bit of daily exercise is one of the most important things not to give up when working on a startup. You feel and sleep a lot better which affects everything.
    - 15y ago
ferrofluid 15y ago
"The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
- marquis 15y ago
  I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call the work displayed here art, but I do agree that it can be admired on it's own merits.
  - thret 15y ago
    Defining art is difficult; but something created to be admired on it's own merits is certainly a candidate. I'm comfortable calling recreational hacks art.
skrebbel 15y ago
I like the list, but some entries are disappointing. Like playing mspaint.exe as audio - didn't we all do that when we were 14? I know I did.
- dextorious 15y ago
  No, we were busy getting laid.
  - the-cakeboss 15y ago
    I wasn't doing either at 14...
- nazar 15y ago
  I surely tried to open it in text editor, but it never occurred to me to play it as audio
pud 15y ago
This is like 10 HN posts in one. Thanks!
taylorbuley 15y ago
The success of this post on HN suggests there's a niche for "awesome but useless" style collections. That said, sadly this site hasn't been updated since May 22. My pinboard account suggests there's been many awesome-but-useless things created since.
marknutter 15y ago
I don't know why, but I find it extremely difficult to work on stuff that I don't think will someday become useful or profitable. I think this is what differentiates a lot of hackers out there. There are the hackers who create for the pure joy of it; they love to learn, create neat things, and don't like to worry so much about the viability or marketability of their creations. Then there are the hackers who do it solely so that they or others can profit from it. We need both - the former are the toolmakers and typically push the tech in new directions that become practical later on. The latter are the tool-users and take what's been learned from the tool-maker's efforts and apply it to the real, functioning world.
shin_lao 15y ago
If it's awesome, it's not useless.
- tikhonj 15y ago
  Maybe I'm just naturally contrary, but I always think that something interesting is more likely to be awesome if it is useless. After all, you probably have an ulterior motive in making something useful: that's pretty much the definition of "useful". But something complicated and useless? That's just cool.
- goblin89 15y ago
  Exactly. You could use the techniques you saw in awesome CSS3 or WebGL demo. You may get inspired by these demos to do something different. Even simple looking at stuff (if it's not awesome enough for you to check out at how it's done, or you're not a programmer) at least refines your understanding of possibilities of different technologies, that kind of knowledge we use often without noticing it. Hell, a post with playing paint.exe as audio data might give an idea for a killer 8bit chiptune dubstep track! They say that even watching TV might be useful, depending on how you're doing it. (Can't remember the source, ironically.) So, we shouldn't be quick at labeling things useless.
pohungc 15y ago
The js PC emulator is pretty awesome.
chaostheory 15y ago
I could be wrong but I think that's what people thought of experiments with electricity a few centuries ago. I don't think things are useless if you learn something and / or if it's beautiful.
BrainScraps 15y ago
Regretsy for hacks?
pja 15y ago
Produce no code that you do not know to be useful or believe to be awesome. A mantra to live by?

226 points by idan 15y ago

Love the title! Sadly, it describes so much these days. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a hacker at heart and love to get under the hood, pull things apart, and put them back together. But the more I do this, the more I hear this little voice in my head say, "Wait a minute. Sure it's cool, but what's the point?" I have started using an approach that satisfies both my need to hack and my desire to be useful: I try to hack not the stuff that I find interesting, but that which my customers do. It took a little while to get used to (who cares about past due orders when I could be playing with HTML5?), but I have been pleasantly surprised. Grokking someone else's stuff may not lead to many happy dances, but it sure is fun watching someone with money to spend do a happy dance of their own.

the_mitsuhiko 15y ago
> "Wait a minute. Sure it's cool, but what's the point?" Learning.
- llambda 15y ago
  > Learning. Exactly. And just to expand on this a bit, the process and resulting value of an experience should not be discounted. This is the foci of experiential learning. I can only speak for myself here, but the way I've learned best has always been by getting into something and doing it! Not always successfully, but rarely without gaining some kind of knowledge in the process. Importantly, for me, an important aspect of this has always been because it was "cool" to me. It it weren't...I'd probably lose my focus or quickly get bored.
- cookiecaper 15y ago
  >Learning Learning is of course awesome. It's the entire point of life. We are all here to learn. But, excessively doing things solely for the sake of "learning" is actually doing a disservice to yourself. You should do things with tangible applications to real people besides yourself, too. There are a lot of preliminary or experimental avenues to explore, but once you find a handful with promise, my advice would be to try to follow those more deeply and apply the principles you learned to something with direct applicability. What you'll find is that by turning an experiment into a product, you've actually learned a lot more than you ever thought that little idea could yield up. You'll gain not only depth but also breadth as you explore the implications of that product in various fields, gauge peers' reactions to the product and marketing, and attempt to develop your idea into a repeatable, profitable boon. Tinkering is really important for a lot of reasons, but endless, exclusive tinkering results in a very superficial knowledgebase. I recommend that everyone follow several of their promises tinkers down the rabbit hole and see what comes out of it. I recognize that this takes effort and commitment, but I think you'll often be surprised at the results.
  - kstenerud 15y ago
    If it had a reason it wouldn't be a hobby.
    - cookiecaper 15y ago
      That makes no sense to me. Is there some obligation that all hobbies be useless? One of my hobbies is contributing to open-source software. That's useful, right?
      - cobrausn 15y ago
        As my fiance is so fond of telling me when I say "I'm off to do some work!" when going to work on my programming side projects (which includes open source development with plans for future closed source commercial projects as well), she replies "Until it makes us any money, it's just a hobby. Have fun." Ah, good times.
        jodrellblank 15y ago
        Ask her if she thinks that way about your marriage.
        georgemcbay 15y ago
        Marriage makes you money (via economies of scale and tax breaks).
        cobrausn 15y ago
        She worked and paid our rent and grocery bills while I finished up my CS degree. She can call it whatever she wants. :-)
      - Confusion 15y ago
        A => B /= ~B => ~A
        15y ago
- BCM43 15y ago
  Fun? Why do you go on walks? Read fiction books? Hang out with friends? I think one of the ruts a lot of hackers (myself included) can fall into is thinking that everything that they do needs to have a point to it that furthers some long term goal. Somethings can be done just because you want to.

samarudge 15y ago

"Candy doesn't have to have a point, that's why it's candy"

bg182 15y ago

I'm working on a startup. My to-do list accumulates tasks faster than I can take items off it. In fact, between starred emails, pen & paper, smartphone apps, web to-dos etc I'm accumulating to-do lists faster than I'm getting through them. I sleep 2 or 3 hours a night. I have no time for friends and my girlfriend is mad at me. I'm in a constant state of stress and anxiety. I can't figure out if I'm on the verge of success or a good for nothing mess. Do I really have time for AwesomeButUseless.com? Why, of course I do :)

Swizec 15y ago
If you're busy, you are very likely doing it wrong -> http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/11/11/if-youre-busy-youre-doing-something-wrong-the-surprisingly-relaxed-lives-of-elite-achievers/ http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/11/11/if-youre-busy-youre-do... I was a lot like you once, until I suddenly realized that taking a step back every now and then actually brings a net positive in productivity because a lot of the time when you're busy and stressed what is actually happening is you're just doing work but not getting things done. My suggestion to you: take a look at your todo's, delete everything that's been there for more than two weeks. Then delete everything where people don't die if you do it tomorrow instead of today. Or, you know, completely disregard this comment, get back to your life, and watch yourself burn out faster than celluloid film.
- bg182 15y ago
  Well, my comments above were meant as a joke. Mostly. Good article. Of course not all work that I do is the productive, or the so-called 'deliberate practice' kind. As referenced by the fact that I'm following up to my own comments on Hacker News. However an important difference between running a startup and playing a musical instrument is that I'd argue its a lot harder to know what the really effective work is, which means you'll generally have to try a few more things. No, I'm not quite as bad as the charicature I've described above. I've found that doing a bit of daily exercise is one of the most important things not to give up when working on a startup. You feel and sleep a lot better which affects everything.
  - 15y ago

ferrofluid 15y ago

"The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde

marquis 15y ago
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call the work displayed here art, but I do agree that it can be admired on it's own merits.
- thret 15y ago
  Defining art is difficult; but something created to be admired on it's own merits is certainly a candidate. I'm comfortable calling recreational hacks art.

skrebbel 15y ago

I like the list, but some entries are disappointing. Like playing mspaint.exe as audio - didn't we all do that when we were 14? I know I did.

dextorious 15y ago
No, we were busy getting laid.
- the-cakeboss 15y ago
  I wasn't doing either at 14...
nazar 15y ago
I surely tried to open it in text editor, but it never occurred to me to play it as audio

pud 15y ago

This is like 10 HN posts in one. Thanks!

taylorbuley 15y ago

The success of this post on HN suggests there's a niche for "awesome but useless" style collections. That said, sadly this site hasn't been updated since May 22. My pinboard account suggests there's been many awesome-but-useless things created since.

marknutter 15y ago

I don't know why, but I find it extremely difficult to work on stuff that I don't think will someday become useful or profitable. I think this is what differentiates a lot of hackers out there. There are the hackers who create for the pure joy of it; they love to learn, create neat things, and don't like to worry so much about the viability or marketability of their creations. Then there are the hackers who do it solely so that they or others can profit from it. We need both - the former are the toolmakers and typically push the tech in new directions that become practical later on. The latter are the tool-users and take what's been learned from the tool-maker's efforts and apply it to the real, functioning world.

shin_lao 15y ago

If it's awesome, it's not useless.

tikhonj 15y ago
Maybe I'm just naturally contrary, but I always think that something interesting is more likely to be awesome if it is useless. After all, you probably have an ulterior motive in making something useful: that's pretty much the definition of "useful". But something complicated and useless? That's just cool.
goblin89 15y ago
Exactly. You could use the techniques you saw in awesome CSS3 or WebGL demo. You may get inspired by these demos to do something different. Even simple looking at stuff (if it's not awesome enough for you to check out at how it's done, or you're not a programmer) at least refines your understanding of possibilities of different technologies, that kind of knowledge we use often without noticing it. Hell, a post with playing paint.exe as audio data might give an idea for a killer 8bit chiptune dubstep track! They say that even watching TV might be useful, depending on how you're doing it. (Can't remember the source, ironically.) So, we shouldn't be quick at labeling things useless.

pohungc 15y ago

The js PC emulator is pretty awesome.

chaostheory 15y ago

I could be wrong but I think that's what people thought of experiments with electricity a few centuries ago. I don't think things are useless if you learn something and / or if it's beautiful.

BrainScraps 15y ago

Regretsy for hacks?

pja 15y ago

Produce no code that you do not know to be useful or believe to be awesome. A mantra to live by?