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“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody w

by jweir 2y ago

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

doytch 2y ago
Not only would a professional carpenter use plywood, it may be a sounder choice because of its stability/weight ratio.
- brandall10 2y ago
  The point isn't about utility, it's about aesthetics - it's about how the product is finished. What you use in the back should be the same as elsewhere.
  - formerly_proven 2y ago
    Even furniture from The Old Masters doesn’t have beautiful veneered back panels, but plain, unfinished boards.
    - brandall10 2y ago
      Sure, but I'm just explaining Steve's reasoning here. People are saying it's a bad analogy without understanding what he's actually saying.
  - jodrellblank 2y ago
    On the back of the Mona Lisa should be ... another Mona Lisa?
- nextaccountic 2y ago
  A plywood back would be prone to water damage, however
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - mrob 2y ago
    The best option is plywood for the dimensional stability, varnish for waterproofing, and solid wood edge trim to give some resilience against mechanical damage that would otherwise risk delamination. This also hides the ugly part of the plywood.
- germinator 2y ago
  Yeah, it's a weird metaphor, especially since plywood is a premium, structural material. I wish my Ikea furniture used plywood. Instead, you get fiberboard. It's also a good example of how the metaphor this blog post is predicated on can fall apart. Your customers care about durability, but they make purchasing decisions based on cost and outward appearance. In a world like that, where you can't satisfy all requirements at once, you inevitably end up cutting corners on the things the customer cares about but can't measure. But is that right? That's how you end up with $200 furniture that lasts a year or two in a home with children or pets. It's also easy to neglect cumulative costs. Back to software: does it matter if your app uses 100 MB of memory when it could be using 1 MB? On an individual basis, no, because RAM is cheap. Cumulatively, when every other app developer thinks the same, and when you multiply it by billions of devices, your decision might have actually cost lives if you consider the increased emissions and countless other distant externalities. A milder version of the blog's claim is definitely true. You should pick your battles. But it's all about trade-offs, there are few problems that truly don't matter to anyone.
sillysaurusx 2y ago
Thank you for finding the quote. I stand corrected. I think I misread this at the time as him saying that no one will see it, so it doesn’t really matter. It’s an interesting experience to wake up one day and see that the meaning of one of those old stories was exactly the opposite of your takeaway. In hindsight there does seem to be some truth to this. What surprised me about the Hacker News codebase is that pg almost never cut corners. To this day I still find new features I never realized I wanted. On the other hand, pg never coded anything unless it was absolutely necessary for whatever he was trying to accomplish (or at least he presented his few public pieces of code as such), which is something I’ve had trouble emulating. Coding is just too much fun sometimes.
6510 2y ago
The correct answer is: I'm not, you're not either. I've oddly asked a carpenter why he was using plywood, his response was: I'd prefer not to but this is what people want nowadays. (meaning this specific customer) If you are a software engineer you, with pride, rewrite half the company in rust and the other half in elixer. Tell the board you wont be able to sleep.

by jweir 2y ago

doytch 2y ago

Not only would a professional carpenter use plywood, it may be a sounder choice because of its stability/weight ratio.

brandall10 2y ago
The point isn't about utility, it's about aesthetics - it's about how the product is finished. What you use in the back should be the same as elsewhere.
- formerly_proven 2y ago
  Even furniture from The Old Masters doesn’t have beautiful veneered back panels, but plain, unfinished boards.
  - brandall10 2y ago
    Sure, but I'm just explaining Steve's reasoning here. People are saying it's a bad analogy without understanding what he's actually saying.
- jodrellblank 2y ago
  On the back of the Mona Lisa should be ... another Mona Lisa?
nextaccountic 2y ago
A plywood back would be prone to water damage, however
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- mrob 2y ago
  The best option is plywood for the dimensional stability, varnish for waterproofing, and solid wood edge trim to give some resilience against mechanical damage that would otherwise risk delamination. This also hides the ugly part of the plywood.
germinator 2y ago
Yeah, it's a weird metaphor, especially since plywood is a premium, structural material. I wish my Ikea furniture used plywood. Instead, you get fiberboard. It's also a good example of how the metaphor this blog post is predicated on can fall apart. Your customers care about durability, but they make purchasing decisions based on cost and outward appearance. In a world like that, where you can't satisfy all requirements at once, you inevitably end up cutting corners on the things the customer cares about but can't measure. But is that right? That's how you end up with $200 furniture that lasts a year or two in a home with children or pets. It's also easy to neglect cumulative costs. Back to software: does it matter if your app uses 100 MB of memory when it could be using 1 MB? On an individual basis, no, because RAM is cheap. Cumulatively, when every other app developer thinks the same, and when you multiply it by billions of devices, your decision might have actually cost lives if you consider the increased emissions and countless other distant externalities. A milder version of the blog's claim is definitely true. You should pick your battles. But it's all about trade-offs, there are few problems that truly don't matter to anyone.

sillysaurusx 2y ago

Thank you for finding the quote. I stand corrected. I think I misread this at the time as him saying that no one will see it, so it doesn’t really matter. It’s an interesting experience to wake up one day and see that the meaning of one of those old stories was exactly the opposite of your takeaway. In hindsight there does seem to be some truth to this. What surprised me about the Hacker News codebase is that pg almost never cut corners. To this day I still find new features I never realized I wanted. On the other hand, pg never coded anything unless it was absolutely necessary for whatever he was trying to accomplish (or at least he presented his few public pieces of code as such), which is something I’ve had trouble emulating. Coding is just too much fun sometimes.

6510 2y ago

The correct answer is: I'm not, you're not either. I've oddly asked a carpenter why he was using plywood, his response was: I'd prefer not to but this is what people want nowadays. (meaning this specific customer) If you are a software engineer you, with pride, rewrite half the company in rust and the other half in elixer. Tell the board you wont be able to sleep.