26 ms·

Most people don't care about quality

• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• userbinator 2y ago
  They don't care about quality to the extent that it doesn't affect their lives.
• phkahler 2y ago
  Everyone I've talked to agrees that Netfix is full of crap with some things worth watching. Some of that is because people have different taste, but even within their preferred "thing" they say the same.
• tonetheman 2y ago
  [dead]
• _yb2s 2y ago
  I think the author is right, but it presents a great opportunity for people that appreciate quality over newness. Old stuff that is good- from media to cars to clothing is practically free, and the new stuff that is garbage quite expensive. There are so many excellent old movies and music you can never have time to explore it all in a lifetime. It’s not just that people don’t care about quality- it seems to me that they cannot tell at all, but insist on newness instead for some reason- perhaps hoping that it will make them appear discerning to others? Is there some other explanation I am unaware of?
  • nradov 2y ago
    Where can I find a quality old car for practically free?
    • forgetfreeman 2y ago
      Facebook marketplace or craigslist. $5k will net you something running with a solid motor and transmission. $500 will get you a project that'll eat a year or two of nights and weekends.
    • _yb2s 2y ago
      I’ve regularly bought and sold good running 70s/80s/early 90s Volvos and Mercedes for under $1000 (and sometimes under $100) on Craigslist and at auto auctions- close to their scrap metal value, yet these are vehicles that will last a million miles with regular maintenance. Ironically, supply and demand can make something more reliable cheaper- these cars just don’t die, so there is too much supply and little demand. For $8k you can get a ~20 year old Porsche or Audi with low mileage, that has been meticulously maintained, always stored indoors, and looks and drives like it did when new. Getting a good deal on a used car requires some mechanical knowledge to identify a car that is going to be reliable. I look for cars previously owned by mechanically savvy people that have already spent the money to mitigate any known design flaws or potential issues on that particular model.
      • _yb2s 2y ago
        One point I wanted to add- an older car like this is fully depreciated, and will often increase in value if you manage to keep it in the same condition. Buying older cars- especially models with rarer desirable traits like a Turbo or manual transmission, I've often been able to drive them for years, and ultimately sell them with enough profit to recoup all of my purchase and parts costs. There's a somewhat tongue in cheek book "Porsche Boxster: The Practically Free Sportscar" that makes a pretty solid case that if you but the right model of car right at the age where the price is lowest, it can appreciate enough to virtually cancel out the full ownership costs. Although for the math to work out you need basically not consider the cost of a garage to keep it looking nice, or your time to maintain it yourself. Which is, I think a fair point if you consider the car a hobby, and get joy from taking care of it.
  • steveBK123 2y ago
    Some truth here, and you do see this in home construction. My parents horrific Formica & linoleum 80s kitchen and hardwood floors still looks the same as they did when I was a child. My new construction “luxury” condo had serious wear damage within 5 years. I’ll have to gut the kitchen and replace my faux wood floors while my parents place remains indestructible.
    • lurking_swe 2y ago
      LOL at the “luxury” faux wood floors. I know the feeling, my previous condo was like that. The marketing is absurd these days. I learned the hard way that if luxury is in the name, it’s not actually luxury.
      • _yb2s 2y ago
        I hate fake wood floors with a passion… they are so slippery they are fatal- I had a dog become paralyzed by slipping and breaking his neck, and an Ex break a foot falling on these. They are so hard they hurt your feet, look disgusting even when brand new, wear out quickly, and disintegrate if they get wet. They are a safety hazard and should be illegal.
        • steveBK123 2y ago
          That sounds awful. Dryness is also an issue - we had a lot of people in the building who weren't keeping their units humid enough in winter end up with the planks warping significantly. The other day my wife spilled, MAYBE 2-4oz of water MAX and took 1 minute to wipe it up.. next thing you know we had a plank warp a full half inch upwards. We had to place barbells on it for days while it dried out to remediate. Oh and these idiotic faux wood plank floors are also what they put in the kitchen & laundry closet so water damage is basically guaranteed.
          • _yb2s 2y ago
            I have noticed traveling that in many other countries it is the norm to have some type of totally waterproof flooring in bathrooms, kitchens, etc. so that it can be simply hosed down, and the inevitable leaks don't destroy everything... but in the USA it is the norm to put flooring that cannot handle getting wet, right near or under appliances and fixtures that will inevitable frequently leak.
• ergonaught 2y ago
  This is basically the difference between creating art and creating commoditized product. The distinction and the unwillingness to acknowledge the distinction (even though it’s made regardless) creates a lot of friction. The masses don’t give a damn, and if all you’re trying to do is extract maximum revenue as efficiently as possible, there is no reason to expend the additional resources (and incur the additional risks) of doing more than the necessary minimum. The artists/craftspeople have a vision and they care. Then the money arrives and none of that matters to the money. Examples are everywhere. Video game studios discover that they can make a billion with crap story so stop investing resources in story, only the people who care even notice, and there aren’t enough of them to matter: they aren’t the audience anymore. Etc.
  • amarcheschi 2y ago
    This connects quite well with another post discussed in the previous days here on hn, the age of average https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42405999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42405999
  • bigiain 2y ago
    > The masses don’t give a damn More important, even people who _do_ give a damn, don't give a damn about everything. And even the things they do give a damn about, they don't give a damn about every time they "do that thing". I give a damn about music. I have a collection of about 3,000 LPs, a few hundred 12" singles, and over 5,000 CDs. I love to draw the curtains and sit in my dark lounge room, power up my 80's vintage all analogue hifi, and critically listen to albums on vinyl - no distractions, focusing on the music and performance. But that's only maybe 1% of my music listening time. I spend a lot more time listening to music with my earbuds in while exercising or grocery shopping, or in the car. I spend way more time streaming music around the house while doing chores or cooking or reading. I have playlists of music without vocals that I listen to while doing work I need to be able to concentrate doing. Hell, I have Apple Music streaming right now while reading (and posting to HN. I _do_ care about music, but you'd need a decent private investigator to find out, it sure as hell isnt obvious to anyone that's not close to me. And even if you tracked my credit card bills you'd see way more streaming subscription spend than vinyl/cd purchases (which are mostly bought for cash at show merch desks these days). I find most people are passionate about _something_ in the "care about" sense here. I love it when I meet someone new or who I don't know well, and can get into a conversation about "their thing" - whether it's knitting, or building traditional Inuit canoes, or stage lighting for amateur theatre, or ultra light carbon and titanium bicycles, or building a plane, or sailing the north west passage, or setting a land speed record in some very specific class. All things I'm unlikely to ever even consider wanting to do, but which are fascinating to hear about from someone deeply involved in it. I think (or at least optimistically hope) that "the masses" do give a damn. About _something_. You just need to steer the conversation around a bit to find out what their thing is, and be curious and enthusiastic enough to get them talking about it. Its a wonderful thing when that happens, even if what you end up talking about is the drama in purchasing hand dyed yarn from that one woman in Germany on knitting forums, or the history and current land speed record in the 50cc streamlined motorcycle with gasoline fuel class, or what the recommended shotgun shells are for protection against polar bear attack.
• dijit 2y ago
  There’s a bunch of evidence that this isn't true. People seem to choose quality when they have an option. The rise of Apple is not because people are “sheep”, it’s because there is a quality level that apple products never go beneath- even if the design is stupid. People can forgive poor quality with innovation, or in the pursuit of pure art- but the more crappy things get the more you notice people gravitating towards higher quality items/content. The “issue” is when there’s a total monopoly or an oligopoly that is racing to the bottom, which seems to happen quite often, because building high margin things tends to be more risky, and MBAs are risk averse.
  • steveBK123 2y ago
    I think given enough time and experience where people can discover rock bottom dollars isn’t working, they will gravitate towards higher perceived value per dollar. Apple won only after windows gave average home users a horrific bsod/virus/reboot hell of an existence for about 20 years.
    • ronsor 2y ago
      It's also good to remember that Macs weren't exactly that stable until Mac OS X.
      • detourdog 2y ago
        They were stable enough and the plug and play actually worked.
      • steveBK123 2y ago
        And yet people kept buying windows and whining about it many versions of OS X later.
      • Nevermark 2y ago
        Even so, the more Windows machines I had back in the day, the less real work I got done. Something was always not working, with no obvious pattern. Most problems took work to fix. I learned not to install and uninstall things. Even if I needed to. The more Mac’s I had, the more likely I ran into a problem as well. But it was usually just some glitch.
• steveBK123 2y ago
  This is a pretty mainstream behavior that is maybe particularly prevalent in America. Though I think it’s abated elsewhere more by regulation than consumer preferences. People will generally pick the cheapest/worst version of things if it’s more accessible/convenient or if the ability to discern value per dollar is difficult. In those situations people generally decide less dollars / fast is best. I think this is why the “middle” is hallowing out for most product segments. The masses want bad/easy/cheap and the 1% want exclusivity/highbrow.
  • nradov 2y ago
    For some product segments, the economics of software development and mass production have completely eliminated the high end. The classic example is in smartphones: you can spend around $1000 for an Apple iPhone 16 or Samsung Galaxy S24 but there's literally nothing else more exclusive or higher quality available. I can't get a better phone at any price.
    • steveBK123 2y ago
      Completely true in some segments and you can see apple even tried the 1%er watch thing with the ceramic editions. They did keep the Hermes straps around, so it’s really just veblen good accessorizing now. On the other hand there’s the old line about how America is great because the minimum wage worker and CEO both drink the same Coke. Nowadays food has stratified far more and you’re more likely to have the bottom end drinking discount label house brand soda while the 1% doesn’t even drink Coke but instead some artisanal small batch thing you’ve never heard of for $5/can.
    • dehrmann 2y ago
      I'm not sure what you'd be looking for in a better phone. They're bounded by current CPU, battery, and screen technology, and flagship phones are pretty close to the best that's possible. Unless you literally want a gold bezel.
      • steveBK123 2y ago
        I guess one could also argue that actually Apple has diversified into so many SKUs that there is indeed a high end. HN/techie crowd is always buying the latest and greatest version Pro/Pro Max or whatever every year or two,.. but look at the phones your parents/in-laws are using. Apple will happily sell you current year - 1, current year - 2, or the infrequently updated SE model. Mass market is the people buying those and holding them for 3..4..5+ years. We often go out with friends who are teachers and one had the iPhone 11 she apologized takes bad photos so please take group photos with ours, while the other had the 13ish with error messages popping up about his free iCloud being full. My FIL uses a hand-me-down iPhone Xs for banking because he doesn't trust his Android security, etc.
• gbuk2013 2y ago
  I think you only start caring about quality once you have sufficient depth of experience in the subject that you actually care about. Example would be audiophiles - most people can't hear the differences that they trained themselves to hear. Also an illustration that training yourself to prefer quality is an expensive choice. :) My personal thing is high CRI LED lights - most people don’t notice the difference but the flat-looking 80% CRI lights that are installed everywhere really bug me.
  • nradov 2y ago
    Audiophiles can't hear the difference either. They usually fail blind A/B tests.
    • gbuk2013 2y ago
      Everything can be taken to extremes but up to a point you can definitely hear the difference - e.g. MP3 vs FLAC, quality vs budget headphones etc. I never wanted to go any deeper than that for fear of escalating costs!
      • leeoniya 2y ago
        lol we made same comment at same time :D
        • gbuk2013 2y ago
          Most be true then :)
    • leeoniya 2y ago
      eh, it's a spectrum. i would not call myself an audiophile, per se, but i can hear the difference between a 128kbps MP3 and Opus 96kbps. same with $10 ear buds vs $150 iems, or my laptop's shitty 3.5mm stereo jack and a $30 usb dac. once you get into stuff like $1K iems or dacs it's mostly bullshit (aside from brand/aesthetics, and things unrelated to audio fidelity). same with anyone claiming they can hear a difference between FLAC and Opus 160; trust me, you can't.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• bsder 2y ago
  The problem isn't that people don't want quality. The problem is that people can't find quality a priori. Sure, I can tell the quality once the thing is in my hand. However, that's far, far too late. I was willing to pay more for my Chevy Volt, but GM discontinued it anyway. I'm willing to pay more for soap without perfume and chemicals, but Proctor and Gamble discontinued their scentless, antibioticless Ivory Hand Soap and then changed the formula on Ivory Bar soap. etc. I'm willing to pay double for a better plumber, but I can't find him. I'm willing to pay someone double ot triple the amount of money for some bespoke clothing, but I can't find him. etc. If I can find the thing I want, I buy it. A lot of it. But I can't find it.
  • MattGaiser 2y ago
    Some of it is this. I often buy things I suspect are low quality. Why? I can't really figure out what is or isn't low quality, so I am basically purchasing the cheapest raffle ticket so the cost of being wrong is minimal. Same with a lot of services. I often cheap out and DIY. Might I screw up? Absolutely. But family experience with trades has shown that they are also a crapshoot outside a few certifications. Breaking a few locks or light fixtures is cheaper than screwing up once on a locksmith or handyman.
  • timewizard 2y ago
    People want to maximize the value they receive in exchange for the money _and time_ they've spent. Quality is one metric which often fully captures this ideal. You're willing to spend more time and effort to get a product that you perceive as being a higher quality provided you can find it. You're willing to pay more for a better plumber but you realize it takes quite a bit of time and experience to identify that plumber. Life is filled with these compromises. Attempting to understand the notion of "quality" through Netflix's offering is unlikely to reveal anything pertinent. For precisely the same reasons that bad plumbers exist and still get enough custom to support themselves.
  • dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
    >Sure, I can tell the quality once the thing is in my hand. However, that's far, far too late. True, and I believe that at some point in the past products came with a relatively generous return window.
• BlueTemplar 2y ago
  This only discusses the difference between professional and non-professional users, but forgets the amateur side : it will not take long before an amateur becomes picky about their hobby. Also, picking the "crappy" choice because it's the safe choice in a social context is yet another matter... (the quality there is one of helping socialization !)
• dvrp 2y ago
  Apple exists.
  • cyberax 2y ago
    Since when Apple is "quality"? They are a _perception_ of quality.
    • samatman 2y ago
      Since 2001. Although the iMac was pretty good too. But let's go with 2001.
• pockmarked19 2y ago
  Title is patently false. The first part of the article boils down to "most people aren't pedants". The second part is mostly irrelevant because the Netflix pivot to "casual viewing" is a bid to enter a new market. Their viewership (and stock) would immediately tank if they switched exclusively to "casual viewing". TFA acknowledges this when elevating ABBA against something "no one has ever heard of". The insinuation is that popularity equates to quality whereas the opposite is true. It just takes time. Contrary to popular rhetoric, people are neither as dumb nor as smart as you might think. > Fashionistas decry the homogeneity of modern dress. Most of us think jeans and a t-shirt are basically fine. Again, most people are neither pedants nor purists. I think that's the actual point TFA makes, but they chose an inflammatory title.
  • levocardia 2y ago
    Agreed, article is totally wrong. Read any Amazon review for a cheap household product and you'd conclude that people have outrageously high expectations of quality.
    • MattGaiser 2y ago
      I would be interested in knowing if any of those people change their behaviour though. What people say is irrelevant. Do they actually buy differently?
    • kube-system 2y ago
      Regardless of whether or not your point is right -- I don't think Amazon reviews are a good yardstick for this. Product reviews are a tiny but noisy minority, who may or may not even act in line with their grievances. (i.e. some people just like to complain) A better metric would be return rates and/or sales figures.
    • what 2y ago
      That’s not people having a high bar for quality. That’s Amazon being absolutely flooded with low quality products to the point you can’t find anything of even decent quality.
• groovetandon 2y ago
  I think quality and art are two different things, quality is craftsmanship employed in solving a problem and art is a form of creative expression. Even for Netflix, sure the content on Netflix may be for casual watching but from a product design perspective I feel it is far superior to prime, max and disney. I strongly believe that I keep paying for netflix because of this, it is the easiest place for me to watch and reduces all friction in the entertainment experience. Quality matters but it needs to be more holistic - the world doesn't care for your pixel perfection but solving the need - in this case casual entertainment.
• theendisney 2y ago
  Great article in how it enrages the reader. Im not even kidding. Not caring is irrelevant, not noticing the difference is irrelevant too. You notice how their photos are stunning then argue your crappy shots are some how equal. lol A big test in the 90s showed that if pages load instantly visitors click around. For each tiny fraction of delay beyond the limit the clicking very gradually declines. Non of the visitors has a concious experience where they click only 3 in stead of 4 over 75ms extra delay. The article describes what is wrong with capitalism most poetically. The only measure of success is consuming. I wish we could think of a hotswapable replacement but it wouldnt be as proffitable so it cant work. Grasshopper pizza it is then
• dgreensp 2y ago
  By this article’s own standards, I can’t really fault it for jumping to half-assed conclusions, as long as a casual reader might not notice or care. I’m not being glib. Devaluing quality is a choice, and if it’s fashionable to say it’s fine that everything’s being enshittified (because then we can feel smart, rather than disappointed), I’d rather it wasn’t. The flaw is in extrapolating from the fact that different situations require different levels of craftsmanship or attention to aesthetics, standards, etc—and something fancier or more meticulously or expertly made, like a meal from a Michelin star restaurant, might not even be more enjoyed by the particular person who experiences it—to make the point that the things only professionals and those versed in their field know to do, which a layperson might not even notice, don’t really matter. The reality is, whether we enjoy the products and services and experiences that come our way or not is largely due to design decisions beyond what we can consciously attend to and appreciate. It’s all those little details. There is a limit to how low-quality content can be, and it’s actively being explored with the help of AI. One of the effects of capitalism in the US used to be that companies were trying to make higher-quality things for less, because of competition. The strategy now, by the big players, is to just sort of swallow everything up, and then as quality gets lower and prices get higher, consumers feel compelled to just roll with it, because the shift is happening everywhere all at once. In corporations’ ideal world, there is no social contract, no real market forces, the consumer has no leverage, the corporation puts in as little effort as possible, and the consumer pays as much as possible, and still buys the thing, because what else are they going to do. You can put ice cream in front of someone and they’ll eat it, so let’s just all eat ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
• omoikane 2y ago
  This reminds me of another article, not exactly on the topic of "people don't care", but more "people can't tell": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41311135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41311135 - We don't know how bad most things are nor precisely how they're bad (2024-08-21, 310 comments)
• aprilfoo 2y ago
  "Most people" is not something easy to grasp: can we even know if we belong to this group? Beside, i'm not sure if this idea of necessarily mediocre majority is actually relevant. Take competitive businesses, sports, or even arts: any edge over the rest can make a big difference.
• bulatb 2y ago
  "Quality" is what we call the difference between what we like and what's objectively successful, not a property of any object. It's the name we give to one of many ways we confuse "is" and "ought." There's nothing we can say about a thing with "quality" we couldn't also say by tediously listing every single property it has. The only thing that only "quality" can add is information about what the speaker thinks is good. In other words, it's purely an opinion. If most people don't have strong opinions on most products, which seems true, then quality is null for most pairs of person and product—so "most people don't care about quality."
  • forgetfreeman 2y ago
    Nah. Borrow your grandfather's 50 year old screwdriver after having been afflicted by a set from <insert big box hardware store here> and tell me more about how quality isn't an intrinsic property.
    • bulatb 2y ago
      "Doesn't break" and "actually turns screws" are obviously properties of certain screwdrivers, which maybe you don't get with modern ones. I didn't need to say the screwdriver is "quality" to say that. I just had to say what's true. The only thing I'd add by saying "quality" is that I think a screwdriver that "doesn't break" and "actually turns screws" is good, which only tells you something about me. If I'd be happy with a different one that breaks and won't turn screws, I simply wouldn't call the old one "quality" and nothing about either one would change. You might think it's weird if I don't care about a basic thing like whether it turns screws, but maybe I just want a cheap, simple prop for a movie. Maybe it's about a guy whose tools don't work. Maybe I just want the crappy plastic part because it's perfect for some art I'm making. Maybe I bet someone I could break it with a hammer. All that information about me could change what's fit for me to buy, but none of it would change what's true about the product.
      • forgetfreeman 2y ago
        Try what I told you, I get the impression you'll learn something in the process.
• elisharobinson 2y ago
  What is quality https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uAfUOfSY-S0&t=685s&pp=2AGtBZACAQ%3D%3D https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uAfUOfSY-S0&t=685s&pp=2AGtBZAC... Please learn
• est 2y ago
  Most people can't afford quality. Regardless of outcomes of pixel perfect or loudness wars, often we don't have a choice. We just have to deal with it.
• zghst 2y ago
  This article is hard to consume, though it’s a shame that many websites are broken, mobile unfriendly.
  • kodt 2y ago
    Seems like the author doesn't care about quality.
• Summerbud 2y ago
  I am glad to read this article which poke around the idea of "Pixel Perfection", for me that is indeed time-wasted, and I don't know why there are lots of company keeps saying they want this kind of "Perfection". But I do believe people care quality, what they did is comparing the quality with price, Netflix is a bad example since it's so cheap (compared to seeing movie or a show in theater). The viewer saw a bad movie they will just think, oh well, I don't care.
  • datadrivenangel 2y ago
    Pixel Perfection is for the designer so they can claim credit and shed blame to the implementation.
• incognito124 2y ago
  Perhaps related? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41311135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41311135
• FpUser 2y ago
  Correction. Most people don't care about quality where that quality does not matter. And if it does not matter then the original statement is plainly false
• Timwi 2y ago
  The article makes a mistake conflating accessibility issues with pedantry. Keyboard navigability isn't just a “nice to have”; it's something that makes the difference between usable and unusable for a minority of users. Now imagine you're such a user and you're told to stop being such a pedant and you should learn to be content with lower quality software. It's downright offensive. It's like telling a deaf person to “just listen properly”.
• EGreg 2y ago
  Actually people care about perception, both to themselves and showing off to others. They don't care about edge cases or innards. Steve Jobs famously still focused on them anyway.
• puppycodes 2y ago
  The misunderstanding is economic. People care about quality. Few can afford it.
• BoingBoomTschak 2y ago
  Duh.
• satisfice 2y ago
  Quality is value to some person (who matters). This formula is a high quality definition of quality (to me). With this definition I can think and see straight about this subject. “Most people don’t care about quality” therefore is a way of saying “any standard of quality I find interesting and can bring to mind right now seems to be held by a minority of people.” This is interesting to me only in the sense that it implies a lack of rigor and imagination on the part of the writer, as well as the diversity of tastes among people at large. Surely it is easy to tell if most people care about quality in video: just show them randomly generated images (literally white noise) and see if they prefer that to images that seem to tell some kind of story. The author probably means that almost no one invests in quality past a certain point that is good enough to fulfill a purpose they have in mind, and that the demandingness of human purposes decays according to some sort of power law. (this message edited twice because I am especially fussy about typos)
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• keybored 2y ago
  Nothing like some “what the hoi polloi thinks” slop to finish off the year.
• kazinator 2y ago
  I recently got me a second hand Garmin GPS, decade old. Oh, the software issues that detract from an utmost quality that is well within the reach of the hardware! - Latest map from 2024 wants to send me the wrong way down a one way street, which has been that way for something like a decade now. - When I delete the one-way street segment, giving a start and end point, in the disallowed direction, it deletes both directions of the segment. Like, have a checkbox for that: [ ] delete both directions? Or something. - Only two voices available for English, only one of which says street names. A 2004 Magellan Roadmate I once had featured more voices. - The pronunciations are horrible. It wants to say "Pinetree" as "PEE-nuh-tree", would you believe it. Just about every other street name of Anglo-Saxon origin is mispronounced, sometimes even when it is a single dictionary word. - When it can't find satellites (e.g. inside concrete parkade) it puts up a pointless dialog box about whether to continue searching. If you stupidly take the bait and click "no", it disables satellite searching, switching to some GPS emulation mode for indoor use. You are not told about this until after saying "No", but at least you are told. What you're not told is how to enable it again. You have to go several levels into the right config menu to uncheck this. Jaw-droppingly moronic dark UI pattern. - Search is bjorked, When you select a subcategory like shopping, there is a multi-second lag between the characters of your search term, though there is no progressive search going on; no results are being refined on the screen as you type: you will not see a result until you submit the search term. If you don't select a category and just search globally, there is no lag. They messed up the priority between the UI and background activity. The number one priority is appearing responsive to the user, even if it takes cycles away from the background activity---which it actually won't, or not significantly! - Doesn't speak the acuteness of turns: like "slight right turn" or "hard left turn". The much older Magellan unit I had did this. And it had a dedicated button for repeating the last instruction. - Volume control onscreen only, buried in menus, making it unsafe to just fiddle with the volume while driving. Old Magellan had buttons for this. - I hate the tone-deaf CLAW-midder pronunciation of kilometer; why don't these things have an option to say KEE-low-meeder? You know, like kilogram, kilobyte, kilopascal, kilohertz, kilovolt ... which are never CLAW-grum, CLAW-bite, CLAW-pascull, CLAW-hurts and CLAW-vuhlt!!! You can escape from this grating assault on the ears by switching to Japanese. This stuff happens because a product is good enough. People accept it, it sells, and so it's BGAF: beyond giving a F. On the positive: the build quality of the thing is good: it's a solid piece of hardware. The suction cup is tenacious, and arm assembly is solid. The thing doesn't shake whatsoever, even if hovering off the dashboard, yet the ball joint is easy to detach. Screen is large, decently bright and sharp with good resolution. Using a USB-based cable is a boon. Instead of the car adapter cable provided with the unit, I use its alternative USB cable used for upgrades, plugged into the Type A jack of generic USB charger. That charger has two more Type C ports for charging phones. Yay! The unit's built-in battery means it never reboots for engine starts. It has a 15 second auto shut-down for when the power is cut to the USB port. All good.
• ashoeafoot 2y ago
  But the ones that do did drive producers decisions . Then they learned they can defeat the free market by dividing and conquering the cattle. So now, if you do not haggle and look you horribly overpay. Used to be that you moved in the protective shadow of others.
• exabrial 2y ago
  This is absolutely false. Everyone expects quality, but most have given up hope and accept shit instead; if it's going to break, you might as well not spend a lot.
  • magic_smoke_ee 2y ago
    The fallacy many people fall for is that low quality impression and cheaper and good value do not necessarily all correlate positively. Instead, can we not strive for excellence in all things as a matter of pride?
    • exabrial 2y ago
      > Instead, can we not strive for excellence in all things as a matter of pride? well spoken.
• magic_smoke_ee 2y ago
  Sigh Rhetorically: What's the point of pride or doing anything in life if you're not going to try to make something (eventually, objectively) excellent?
• pessimizer 2y ago
  People get offended because they like to think of themselves as moral, protestant beings divinely motivated to strive for perfection in their work. It isn't that some people don't care, it's just that unmotivated "caring" is arbitrarily distributed. This shop may be filled with passionate people trying to channel the Universe's principle, and the shop next door may be filled with people who actively hate what they do, and who they do it for, even though they're not going anywhere. This decade your industry may be full of passionate people, and the next decade you can't find a single person who cares. That sort of stuff is wildly dependent on propaganda and people making myths about themselves and what they do. And on how much everybody is making. What's important are people's lifestyles, what they really want to enjoy, and how that will be impeded or aided by the product. The product is not a goal in itself except to fetishists (and they're enjoying their fetish.) People want to be happy. The system surrounding them determines their relationship to the product, because it determines how the product can improve their odds/ability to enjoy themselves, at least over a different product, or a different process. This is the countervailing force to "premature optimization is the root of all evil." Most people have no reason to care very much about polishing what they're doing, because they're doing it for is to draw a salary, not to create a perfect thing. If you're not going to need it for long, if it's likely to fail, if it has no competition and people will have to use it even if it's bad, if it's the third in a very successful, hyped series and looks enough like the last two but came in a lot cheaper, if you personally already have your next four jobs lined up, if your manager just needs to deliver quickly and will be able to hand maintenance off to someone else, if what you're replacing is garbage, if the thing is already sold. Most people aren't literally interested (as in owning an interest, not some speculation about people's internal states) in caring at all, because something is an improvement over nothing. The people who care are the people who have to pay to maintain something, sometimes, and only when it costs them money. If they're just writing the checks on behalf of someone else, they may even be perversely motivated to want bigger checks, because when that check gets small, the job of the person who writes it is getting endangered. All the way down the the shifting mass (the people who have no standards in music are a different though maybe overlapping set than the people who have no standards in cars) of the majority consumer with very few standards, often enforced by a market that has connived to offer them very few options. Even worse, all marketing is designed to attach an image to the actual product: it is often having to try and convince you that something that is mediocre, and that you've already experienced, is luxury. If you've invested in mediocre luxury, you have to pretend that it was worth it, at least not to feel dumb like you've made a bad investment, or to grab some worth out of the thing as a Veblen good. Why I said it's the countervailing force to the premature optimization cliché is not an original thought, but if you don't prematurely optimize, you're probably never going to get a chance to optimize, because too many people will find it useful enough half-broken. So if you're the one that's going to be stuck with it, or take the (financial) blame for problems with it, push back and prematurely optimize as much as you have time to do (but watch that time, if it's software I always double my guess of how long something's going to take.) Otherwise, you should really also not be caring about quality. It's a means, not an end.
• extropian 2y ago
  Most people do care about quality. There are so few things of great quality that most have to remain content with the available options. Like in the article, anyone watching Netflix's badly written shows have probably watched all the great ones there - and there are not a lot of great ones to go through in most niches.
• palata 2y ago
  First, there is a huge difference between art and engineering that the author completely misses. Because most people are not competent to judge the quality of two similar product does not mean they don't care about quality. They just usually can't tell, so they go for the cheaper (which has a higher probability of being worse). And it drives the prices down, and the quality with it. Or it reinforces monopolies, because only those who already produce at scale can produce better quality at lower price. But if there was a way to correctly tell people: "look, this smartphone is 20% more expensive, but it will last twice as long and it will be more convenient for you in ways you can't understand right now", nobody would go for the worse quality, right? The problem is not that people don't care about quality, it's that they are not competent to judge it and marketing does the rest. Then the article talks a lot about art. Interestingly, the author says "I'm pride to not understand art, but let me still explain to you how it works". And then proves it by giving contradictory examples like "people don't care about quality, they will just listen to ABBA or go to the Louvre". You have to not understand ABBA or what's in the Louvre to think like that. So here is my rant: it's okay to be proud to not be knowledgeable about stuff. But then don't be surprised if people notice that you have no clue if you write about it. (Yes, I noticed the irony of writing a pedant comment about a mediocre article that prides itself in being mediocre and criticises pedantry :-) ).
  • maxerickson 2y ago
    Economics has the idea of expressed preferences. So for instance, with that framework, if you choose the cheaper item instead of the inconvenience of understanding the tradeoffs between the items, you obviously care less about quality than price and convenience.
    • rcxdude 2y ago
      Yes, but that's because the cost of evaluating the quality is very high, often infeasibly so. (Seriously, it's pretty difficult. Read reviews? They can give some idea, but it's rare that they do any rigourous testing, and they can be corrupted. Have a brand or specific model that you like and has a good reputation? How do you know they haven't started to cash in on that by cutting quality but still charging the same prices?)
• ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  Sadly, I have to agree with him. I still do my best, though. I just know that it's like pissing a dark pair of pants: No one notices, but you get a warm feeling from it. As long as I am prepared to deal with no one being willing to pay for Quality (solved, by not being paid for my work), and people completely disregarding -even complaining about- the things that I consider "my finest work", then I'll be OK. I write UX that "doesn't stand out." It "just does what it's supposed to do," without flash. When someone uses my apps, they don't see cute little "Look at how cool this is" animations, or whatnot. There is likely to be an animation, but it will just be a quick one, there to smooth a transition, not to please the user. etc. People like my apps, but they don't rave about them. The reason that I know it's working, is because they are constantly using the apps. Many "eye candy" apps get used a bunch, for a little while, then folks get sick of the flash, and stop using them. But no one would be willing to pay for this. I just made a release, that incorporated some major-league changes, with very little indication in the UI[0]. It took a couple of weeks of testing, and fixing small bugs, but many folks would have shipped right away, and the app would probably still be used. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42563473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42563473
  • prmph 2y ago
    People do care about quality; it's just that there is wide variation between people's ability to notice, and care about, quality. To put it simply, for a particular work, the amount of people who would notice it's quality and care about that, is small, but not zero. I do notice that the more people have experience with a field, the more they appreciate simple things that work well. As in, their taste matures. Most people on this site do appreciate web design that is free of clutter of gaudy flashy animations and ads, etc. Some people just don't have a sense of taste, and their appreciation for quality might never mature. Also, even when a person appreciates quality, it is not the case that they value it so much in a particular instance that hey would pay more for it. But, in specific instances, yes, they will demand, and maybe pay for, quality
• tow21 2y ago
  Otherwise pointless pedantry, but in line with the "nobody cares about quality" ... "the hoi polloi" grates every time I read it. "hoi polloi" literally means "the many", so this is an awkward pleonasm, "the the many", amounting to a lack of quality in a piece of writing.
• pjmlp 2y ago
  Working in offshoring projects has taught me this as well, as long as the solution kind of works, it is good enough.
• mirekrusin 2y ago
  Wouldn't Apple be already bankrupt if that was true?
• alexfromapex 2y ago
  My hypothesis is the lack of quality is being driven by our quantitative and empirical obsessions. It's more difficult, if not impossible in some cases, to accurately quantify qualitative outputs. But I think if enough research was done, it would show that quality is an ultimate driver of success in many domains. It's a sad state of affairs that starts at the top, where governments are mostly driven by things like GDP.
• MarkusWandel 2y ago
  But a few do. And if you put extra care into the taking and selection of photos that you publish in what remains of the social media scene for me (small Whatsapp groups and Strava) and one person notices and comments favourably, that makes it all worthwhile. As feedback to a a creator. Of course, if this was about money and you could produce two crappy things that earn $1.50 for the effort of producing one good thing that earns $1... do the math.
• ricardobeat 2y ago
  Such a dire outlook. There is a huge chasm between Domino's and great pizza, and between great movies and Netflix assembly-line productions. A lot of people care enough to land somewhere in between, not at the lowest common denominator. There is room for both pop culture and art. The comment on the photography is also clearly misguided: people might not be able to explain why, but the vast majority will feel that the more professional picture is pleasing/better in some way. My take: people "don't care about the details" when it's beyond understanding, but the outcomes are still materially different and meaningful at a subconscious level. Ask anyone on the street to name a movie Elvis was in... meanwhile [insert your favorite movies here] still show up in popular vote even decades after going out of fashion. Selling mediocre products might be more lucrative, but not everything is about money.
  • gjsman-1000 2y ago
    I’m going to apply this to an unpopular opinion on web development, just as one example: Most users don’t care about your SPA. I have built every app as a MPA with page transitions for a nice fade. I have had multiple complements on how it’s so fast. Nobody, not one person, among 8000 users, has complained about the page reloading. This is just one example where I think the article is accurate: engineers tend to overshoot the mark on metrics nobody cares about, or try to improve “experiences” that nobody cares about, or rationalize complexity forgetting that even Amazon doesn’t bother with an SPA.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • graemep 2y ago
      I think your last para is spot on. There are dimensions of quality people care about, and dimensions they do not. Websites are a good example. The article says a designer will notice jank. I usually do not care about the design: I want the content, and I care a but about usability (in a limited way - e.g. things that are hard to find annoy me). Websites and UIs in general are often made worse by people whose measure of quality is aesthetics rather than usability - there have been multiple HN discussions about articles on this topic. Different people may care about different ones (e.g. one person might want a high performance car, another a comfortable one). I found the bit about actors accents amusing. American attempts at British accents are always annoying, and it even happens with British actors in American produced things having weird or wrong accents. It is sloppy but its rarely puts me off something I like otherwise. Dealing with other countries and cultures is often done sloppily. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a good example too to anyone who recognises the language people in one village are speaking which is spoken a very long way (certainly well over a thousand miles) from where it is set. As for SPAs, I do not think preferring MPAs is an unpopular opinion on HN.
• donatj 2y ago
  A frustration I have about the current crop of shows and movies generally, but with exceptions, is that so often things seem to just largely happen for no reason other than the writer thought it would be fun/interesting. They lack causality, and I find it so boring. Instead of "this is happening because this happened," I feel like a lot of modern media is just "this happened and then this happened". It's the Minions formula, and it's showing up everywhere.
  • nemo44x 2y ago
    > "this happened and then this happened" Honestly, this sounds like the formula so many comedies in the 1980s took. A series of vignettes that are loosely connected by some thread of a story that's secondary to the hijinks and then a brief semi-dramatic scene in the last act and a happy resolution. It's a pretty tried and true formula and I think it works because the audience doesn't have to think much or pay attention the entire time.
  • jerf 2y ago
    In a 2:15 video (that's 2 minutes, not two hours), half of which is just setup, Matt Stone and Trey Parker talk about this in the context of writing South Park. One of the reasons I hold modern Hollywood in open contempt right now is that so much of their output fails this basic test, at scale. Not only is Hollywood largely not writing at a Writing 101 level, they're not writing at a first day of Writing 101 level. It is so sad seeing all the other professionals in the industry get utterly crippled by writers hired for every reason other than whether they can tell even a competent story, let alone a good one.
• timerol 2y ago
  The ending really missed an opportunity, as "Casual Eating" is a silly term to coin when the rise of the "fast casual" restaurant has already happened
• __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  Most people don't agree about which qualities are worth caring about. "Quality" as a generic term, is mostly meaningless. It's a word for people who can't shake the habit of thinking in terms of values and quantities to mean "a measure of approval from whoever matters right now".
• svilen_dobrev 2y ago
  IMO the good-enough has won. (as in "90% of everything is crap".. good-enough crap). At least within ~~capitalistic something-for-money setup. if one pulls the money from the equation, some thing may change. But don't hold your breath.
• blfr 2y ago
  People will accept low quality shockingly often (to me at least) but even when they have little experience, complete laymen will be able to tell well-written software, solid ux, nice suit, good skiing form, etc from their lower quality versions, especially side-by-side. On the other end, there are enthusiasts of virtually anything and, with the Internet, you can find them and bask in their wisdom or outright use their expertise. You can boot Linux, have world-class coffee in any large city, find an old-school tailor, import the nichest of niche gadgets. It is the worst of times, it is the best of times.
• nedrocks 2y ago
  Catering to the masses is indicative of catering to system 1 thinking. System 1 thinking is extraordinarily cheap compared to system 2. When a movie has good cover art, an alluring trailer and one name you've heard of before, it is good enough so long as you don't engage system 2 thinking. The same can be said for your domino's argument - picking a good pizza place takes a lot of thought: deep dish vs new york style, delivery vs pick up, price point, etc. Domino's is just there, in-app, and cheap. System 2 thinking compounds. Once you've really tried great pizza, studied film, felt good product design, drank good wine, and so on it is hard to go back. Even when operating in system 1, after you know what makes things good, you can just feel the lack of quality. This is what some people use to term "snobishness" because it can lead to turning one's nose up at something that's good enough to the untrained eye. The minimum bar for is a great measure for society's system 2 quotient. The more deep thought, focus, and experienced a culture is, the higher the quality bar is. For instance, as a community becomes wealthier there are more shake shakes rather than burger kings because with more money people have more free time to experience good foods, leading to a system 1 preference for a higher quality bar. I'd love to see how this plays out over different communities and cultures.
  • bluepizza 2y ago
    My understanding was that System 1/System 2 thinking is unproven conjecture[1] that can't even be replicated[2]. It would be unwise to analyse behaviour using this framework. 1: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/a-hovercraft-full-of-eels/202103/the-false-dilemma-system-1-vs-system-2 https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/a-hovercraft-full-... 2: https://replicationindex.com/2016/01/31/a-revised-introduction-to-the-r-index/ https://replicationindex.com/2016/01/31/a-revised-introducti...
    • nedrocks 2y ago
      I don't want to argue the basis of system 1/system 2 as described in [1], because the point I'm taking away is more about whether they interoperate at times of decision making. The point I'm making is system 2 is a far more costly (effortful in the article) mechanism of decision making. The point I'm making is, as an organism we avoid utilizing higher-effort or higher-cost actions when unnecessary. An untrained lower-cost (IR1 in the article or System 1 in my definition) decision will result in not caring about quality. A trained lower-cost decision will utilize heuristics to bias for higher quality.
• mentalgear 2y ago
  I wouldn't say they don't care in general, but everyone care for something different depending on subject matter & time. That being said, you should know and build for your target audience.
• deeg 2y ago
  The rise of craft foods--e.g craft beer and cheese--seems to prove this essay wrong.
  • ndileas 2y ago
    The continual popularity of Kraft cheese may bolster the argument.
• mattgreenrocks 2y ago
  Most people may not, but that doesn't really matter. You should care about quality because shipping things that make the best of the time and skills you have then is a great feeling. It doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough that you feel like you gave it a good shot. This bootstraps a positive feedback loop of wanting to incrementally improve that, or do even better next time. One thing I've realized as I've been learning front-end design is that most websites aren't actually that visually pleasing or even necessarily well-designed. They're just okay enough that it doesn't get in your way. That's quite a low bar to cross! I'll also die on the hill that people can tell when care and attention was put into things they use. They may not be able to consciously perceive it, but it's there, and it builds trust, which is essential if you're trying to convert a visitor to a paying user.
  • rsyring 2y ago
    >They're just okay enough that it doesn't get in your way. That's quite a low bar to cross! I so wish that were true. I feel like I'm regularly fighting "good enough” sites that get in my way. Or worse, dark patterns that are deliberately making it hard for me to complete a task.
• nottorp 2y ago
  For everything TFA mentions there is a (possibly small) niche that does care about it. Do you want to cancerously grow until you have the market monopoly? Then go for the lowest common denominator, Netflix and Disney style. Do you want to do <random item or item set from TFA>? See what production budget your chosen niche will sustain and stay within it.
• doctorhandshake 2y ago
  I feel like this is effectively the opposite of the long tail argument https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail
• t0bia_s 2y ago
  I was not able to finish reading this text. Webdesign is such a mess.
• RajT88 2y ago
  > In it, the author (correctly and fairly) skewers Netflix's model of producing huge amounts of low-quality content for an undiscerning audience. I think somebody forgot about the before-times, before streaming giants were producing many critically acclaimed TV shows. I like to spelunk old media, because I get to learn things about culture which I did not appreciate when I was young. I also have a HDHomerun tuner wired up to JellyFin so I still peruse broadcast TV in addition to watching some old broadcast TV shows. Most TV shows have always been profoundly crappy in the very same way Netflix shows are. We forgot for a hot minute, because the streaming giants were competing with each other for prestige TV shows to drive subscription growth. It feels like to me this is a trend which is getting walked back after some major mergers.
  • mathattack 2y ago
    Springsteen memorialized this with 57 channels (and nothing on.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/57_Channels_(And_Nothin%27_On) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/57_Channels_(And_Nothin%27_O...
    • RajT88 2y ago
      Heh: > The title may be a reference to cable television, which carries more channels than terrestrial television. DTV these days is in that ballpark for channels - I think I get about 63. And I'm a good ~40 miles out from a major city. There's probably more if you're closer to the city.
• deeperlearning 2y ago
  I've logged in after 10 years to express my disagreement with this misguided and shallow post. 1. Taste is trainable, and far more malleable than the author believes. Good examples of this include "unclassifiable" films such as Parasite, which reached immense global success with both critical and popular audiences, and stood out precisely because it was so different, along with a remarkable depth in its craftsmanship (a given). 2. Overconfidence in hermeneutics. For one, little details are critical and are precisely the mark of superior craftsmanship (or shoddy work if they are neglected). You can see this in the dialogue around detecting AI-generated images. A cool example is the 4-second crowd scene in Miyazaki's The Wind Rises (2013), which took an entire year to animate. 3. A superficial and overreaching view of art. You can see this both in the way they discuss artistic value (external activity and metrics), and also their limited artistic vocabulary (the Louvre as a whole, Elvis, Abba). What about Edo period Japanese painting? What about Abbasid architecture? What about that simulated black hole in Intellerstar (to give a technological example)? This kind of technological slop drives distrust with other industries (especially creative ones), rather than the productive and empowering dialogue we should be having. I hope we can do better on HN, and that for his own sake, the author gains some faith in art again.
• wat10000 2y ago
  People get confused because quality is multi-dimensional and most people only see the dimension they care about. X always buys BMWs because he thinks their design and driving dynamics are unmatched. They can’t understand why people settle for less. Y buys Toyotas because they’re reliable. They think X is crazy for buying something that’s going to cost so much to maintain and repair. They’re both high quality products, but in different ways. X prioritizing design and driving feel over reliability doesn’t mean they don’t care about quality, same for Y. They just care about different things. The Netflix thing is a perfect example. We see those guidelines and think, this is a recipe for low-quality trash. And if you’re looking for something to devote your full attention to for an hour, you’re probably right. But it’s plainly not meant for that. In the context of its purpose, it can be high quality. If it’s meant to be on in the background while you do stuff, it should be judged on that basis. And if you’re looking for something else, go find it. It gets mixed up in social signaling too. Judging a movie’s quality by acting skill and subtle, meaningful scripts is seen as high class. Judging it by special effects or having famous actors is low class. That gets interpreted as the latter not caring about quality, but nothing makes those qualities inherently less worthy. It’s funny, judging food by its ingredients is seen as high class. “The cream was sourced from grass-fed cows on our partner farm in Wherever.” High quality! But don’t try it with a movie. “This movie has Elvis in it.” Low class, you don’t care about quality! Most people care about quality. They may not agree with your specific, personal idea of exactly which dimensions of quality are important.
  • lotsofpulp 2y ago
    Your actor/media production example is not reflective of my reality. There are actors that convey a higher “class” movie, and there are actors that convey a lower “class” movie, and they are constantly in flux. If Elvis isn’t a good actor, or someone like Dwayne Johnson or Vin Diesel keeps making movies with the type of acting that is considered lower “class”, then they set that expectation. But you put Meryl Streep or Robert DeNiro or Denzel Washington etc in a movie, and people will judge it is a higher “class” movie.
    • wat10000 2y ago
      I was thinking of actors who are only there because of their fame, not talent, like Elvis. But there’s a whole spectrum, for sure, depending on why you want to see that actor. If it’s because they give realistic, subtle performances, that’s high class, you care about quality. If it’s because of their physical prowess, that seems to be so-so. If it’s because of their physical beauty, low class, bad movie viewer, you don’t care about quality. Which amuses me, because being aesthetically pleasing is a huge part of high class quality in other things.
• barnabee 2y ago
  Like most of us, I'll take a bit of trash from time to time, but I really do find the old adage "quality, not quantity" to be true, for me at least, most of the time. Generally, though, I'm happy to be the kind of person who makes things with qualities "most people" don't care about, and I'm happy to be the kind of person who cares about, pays [more] for, and compliments people on those qualities in the things I consume. There are more great TV shows and movies than I will ever watch. There are (far!) more great books than I will ever read. Using thoughtfully designed and well-made tools and gadgets is much more satisfying and often works out better, too. etc…
• ben_w 2y ago
  I've been thinking about this in many times over the years. First time, around 20 years ago now, at university: they gave us preparatory interviews, I had written "Committed to quality" on my CV, and I was therfore asked to explain my understanding of "quality". They didn't like what I said. They gave an example of a fancy sports car: high quality, right? But if you want to just go down a hill quickly, you may genuinely prefer a go-kart and be worse off for having a high-end roadster. More recently, architecture patterns. We software developers love them so much we keep inventing more of them like they are poems. Users don't care, and can't tell. Multi-platform UI frameworks, those have been around for ages of course. Never quite as good as native, but that doesn't matter because we get given a single Figma design that's shared between iOS and Android and it only passes QA if we ignore all the native stuff anyway. I would say that it's not that people don't care about quality, but rather it's that the qualities we care about are the very obvious in-your-face issues we know how to spot. Conversely, in cases where we don't know what a mistake even looks like, of course we can't judge things for such mistakes. I've just bought a house and the roof had a leak (true story). I noticed that, when it happened. Quality really matters at times, it's just hard to judge. And what matters to normal people isn't what matters to professionals — I assume the builders have opinions about which tools are the right ones for their jobs, that I'm as oblivious about as they would be about VIPER vs MVC.
• rad_gruchalski 2y ago
  Define quality. Most people don’t care about the quality of things they consider disposable. Someone watching Netflix shows may care about the quality of their food. Someone who likes pizza hut pizza may still enjoy a Kubrick movie.
• numpad0 2y ago
  This reads like a giant self deception to steer himself away from skill issue criticism. The subtext boils down to "I hate pros getting paid for what I don't understand". Devil's in the details. Whether the pros are aligned with profit, that's a different issue, but subtleties you never care to acknowledge... they're real.
• cutler 2y ago
  Also true in the programming world where JS, Python and Java dominate.
• dawnofdusk 2y ago
  Obviously not a universal statement. Clearly an American doesn't care about the difference between Domino's and better pizza, but Italians or Europeans do. Just because your standards are low doesn't mean everyone's is.
• sandspar 2y ago
  He's right of course. His argument builds on the "newspaper effect," where articles in your area of expertise are full of errors, but those outside it seem accurate. The elephant in the room is that AI-generated content doesn't need to be better than Pulitzer Prize winning authors to automate novel writing. It just needs to be better than Colleen Hoover.
• mproud 2y ago
  People care about quality, but it’s about perceived value. Is it worth the time or money investment?
• nextworddev 2y ago
  I kind of agree but still not caring about quality as a creator is deadly in the long run. It kind of breeds a culture of half-assedness that seep into pretty much anything you do or create. And when it really counts, someone important will notice that.
• boh 2y ago
  Neurotic designers often misinterpret their personal affects as design decisions. If people don't care about the quality of something, maybe it's because it actually doesn't matter, no matter how much time you spent on it. Most websites are irrelevant, so colors and fonts aren't going to make much of a difference. When people actually need a thing to work, like a car engine, tools, a battery--they appreciate quality. When they value some artistic medium, they appreciate quality. Even this "nobody appreciates quality" writer doesn't appreciate the quality of something, somewhere, because every single thing can't matter to him. Why should it be surprising that people also don't appreciate every single effort that it is possible to make. Designers need to get over themselves. Maybe people don't appreciate the quality of their work simply because it doesn't matter to them, and that's actually a totally reasonable thing to do.
• Zopieux 2y ago
  How can there be 350 comments and only one mentioning AI, when it is the perfect crime for generating such superficial, conventional, everyone-thus-no-one content en masse? The author missed an opportunity to identify how terrible and dreadful this is for creativity.
• robotburrito 2y ago
  If everyone cares about quality in their specific domain it just adds up to a society being higher quality in general.
• charlie0 2y ago
  Yes, but the inverse is also true. You can count on some people to really care about quality. If you find yourself disappointed by low quality, you're not looking in the right places (or the right price bracket).
• coldtea 2y ago
  >But, much like designers fretting about getting things Pixel Perfect or photographers complaining about background composition or musicians ranting about the loudness wars - the hoi polloi just don't care.(...) Several screenwriters who’ve worked for the streamer told me a common note from company executives is “have this character announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.” So? Not everything should be hard work. After a long day, most people don't want to work for their leisure. The problem is the total lack of concern for the consequences of such a passive and indiscerning audience - and of fueling and rewarding this passivity. Like how "After a long day, most people don't want to work for their leisure". True, but it doesn't just go one way. People are treated like helots and given more work, among other reasons, precisely because they "don't want to work for their leisure". Cattle are given cattle work, and whiped into it. If they worked harder on their leisure - meaning used their leisure to raise about the petty partisan politics, passivity, stupidity, isolation, etc., used to keep them down, they'd fare better.
• asdefghyk 2y ago
  Would not care about quality until something "does not work"
• fqye 2y ago
  I initially agreed with the author but at a second thought, I found the author made a big mistake of not distinguishing different types of quality. The article talked about mostly entertainment or art related quality. However when it comes to utility related quality, it is a totally different story. It is obvious. I even don't need to expand on that.
• ribadeo 2y ago
  Amazing. Someone actually wrote the apology for enshittification and the race to the bottom. I don't feel like catering to such base instincts and boring excuses for a waste of a lifetime. Being popular and mainstream is not a goal of mine.
• ribadeo 2y ago
  Amazing how this comment section turned into a discussion about phones and or the mona lisa. The article itself left undigested gristle stuck in my teeth and bear fat stuck to the roof of my mouth. It reeked of excusing the cocktail of mentalities steering us towards civilizational collapse, IMO. It verily encouraged not caring about any values beyond beer and football, and proposed that this was a healthy diet. No? Lets see some quotes and rebuttals, but this phone purchase decision is boring
• dusted 2y ago
  This is another reason for the wide front of enshittification, there's so much of everything, nobody has to care about quality because they don't care if you come back, as long as you consumed one, there's enough other people that also has to try once for you to make a living.. and everyone is trying a lot, because everything is shit, so they're trying new stuff all the time to see if any of it is better.
• weare138 2y ago
  I'm from GenX. I've been skulking around the tech industry for way too long and this is just bad advice. If you're younger this is just wrong. I can definitively tell you from experience. If you're a website designer, you're always noticing "jank" on other sites. Your skin crawls at the poor kerning, the FOUT, the lack of keyboard navigation, improper contrast ratio, and a dozen other flaws. 99% of users just don't care. It doesn't impact them in any meaningful way. Your users do notice, they just don't know how to express it. Most users coming to your site probably won't know the proper term for it is 'kerning' but they do notice it, especially subconsciously. The user's impression and perception is important. Poor UI/UX results in poor customer perception. This is like Ford Motor Co. saying customers don't notice chipped paint or gaps in the body panels so way bother with quality control. This doesn't apply in other situations, why would it be true in this one? Bluntly, I don't think that's true. Look at the amount of movies Elvis was in. A couple of good ones, sure. But the majority are literally just "This demographic will pay a dollar to see Elvis on screen; so put him on screen". You only need to look at the various lists of highest grossing movies to see that the viewing public don't necessarily reward expertise and craft. Cocaine is popular too. What's your point?