3 ms·

With a spoon, anything you add will probably make it worse, you can sit and think and not find anything to change other than the material. If I give it adjustab

With a spoon, anything you add will probably make it worse, you can sit and think and not find anything to change other than the material. If I give it adjustable length, the mechanism may be unsanitary. There's no long list of features to pick from, once you've decided you're not making a spork, there's no real question of what to include, so the feature set(Be spoon) feels perfect, since I have no alternate design to compare it to. Respectfully, this is completely untrue. If you really study spoons you will notice they exist in various scales, shapes, depths and materials for good reason. Furthermore, some are single use while others are optimized for longevity, various surface properties, weight, reduced physical envelope, ergonomics, aesthetics, strength, rigidity or flexibility, handling of liquids-vs-solids, pouring, surface piercing, tasting, use by machine, specific length, safety, environmental impact, regulatory requirements, measurement, cost of manufacture, logistic concerns or some other set of requirements. Some clearer examples to consider are a wooden spoon used for mixing in a traditional kitchen baking context, a foldable single-use polymer spoon atop a yoghurt container, a traditional English teaspoon with decorative enamel, a ground coffee spoon, measurement spoons and the entire category of ladle-like instruments. (Source: Stepped out of pure software 7 years ago to work in food robotics.)

eternityforest 4y ago
That is a good point, many specialty spoons exist, but it's not quite the same as software. I'm sure we all have utensils we like and dislike, but the feature set is pretty much the same on all of them, especially within a category of specialty type, the difference is mostly decorative and ergonomic. Wheras with tech, we often add things that are only tangentially related to the original purpose, and we add layers of indirection between user and the actual purpose, with millions of ways that mapping can happen. Two variants of nominally the same idea can have totally different possible applications, like a phone with and without a GPS. These days all smartphones have GPS, but what about UWB? What about a stylus? Or wireless charging? They're all smartphones, sold for basically the same general market rather than some specific application, but everyone has a different set of features they want, because it's not a single-function device. Some people might like more or less ornamentation, and some people might prefer silver over stainless steel, but even most of the specialized types don't have extra features, and nobody picks them up and wishes they did, and rarely do people prefer spoons to be multi-purpose.

eternityforest 4y ago

That is a good point, many specialty spoons exist, but it's not quite the same as software. I'm sure we all have utensils we like and dislike, but the feature set is pretty much the same on all of them, especially within a category of specialty type, the difference is mostly decorative and ergonomic. Wheras with tech, we often add things that are only tangentially related to the original purpose, and we add layers of indirection between user and the actual purpose, with millions of ways that mapping can happen. Two variants of nominally the same idea can have totally different possible applications, like a phone with and without a GPS. These days all smartphones have GPS, but what about UWB? What about a stylus? Or wireless charging? They're all smartphones, sold for basically the same general market rather than some specific application, but everyone has a different set of features they want, because it's not a single-function device. Some people might like more or less ornamentation, and some people might prefer silver over stainless steel, but even most of the specialized types don't have extra features, and nobody picks them up and wishes they did, and rarely do people prefer spoons to be multi-purpose.