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I've grown out of being impressed by flashy and difficult to understand data visualizations. I'm much more impressed by novel insight, clearly presented, in fam

by xnx 2y ago

I've grown out of being impressed by flashy and difficult to understand data visualizations. I'm much more impressed by novel insight, clearly presented, in familiar ways.

debeloo 2y ago
I'd call what you describe as impressive, art. Flashy trashy is just crap. Some might call it art but then again everything is art these days.
- malux85 2y ago
  The greatest form of art is the discussion on whether something is art or not. When you see a broken toilet sitting in an art gallery selling for 5 million dollars and someone thinks "I could do that, this is stupid", they have completely missed the point. The art is not the broken toilet, the art is selling it for 5 million dollars - which is something the complaining person definitly cannot do. That's the art.
deleted 2y ago
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jkaptur 2y ago
I think the article addresses your point: "The fact that some disciplines of an art form demand more precision doesn't mean the whole field shares those demands. It would be like saying best practices for photorealism should be applied to abstract expressionism, or how we approach technical writing should be the same as how we approach poetry." It wouldn't make sense to say "I've grown out of being impressed by complex prose" - you're welcome to enjoy Faulker or not, but he simply didn't have the same goals as the authors of the Stripe documentation, and judging both pieces of writing by the same standard is basically pointless (except, perhaps, as an art project of its own). I'd even apply this to coding itself. Day to day, I think everybody around me should be writing Blub, grug-brain code, but I'm happy there are people trying creative, weird languages and mind-bending ideas elsewhere and I'm curious what they find out.
culi 2y ago
I think publications practicing actual journalism like The Upshot and ProPublica do an incredible job of this. The focus is always clear presentation and accessibility above all else but its undeniable that so much of their work is also just gorgeous
BLKNSLVR 2y ago
I think that's the point of the article. Novel insight is almost a pre-requisite to determining how to present the data in a way that's quickly and easily understandable.

by xnx 2y ago

I've grown out of being impressed by flashy and difficult to understand data visualizations. I'm much more impressed by novel insight, clearly presented, in familiar ways.

debeloo 2y ago

I'd call what you describe as impressive, art. Flashy trashy is just crap. Some might call it art but then again everything is art these days.

malux85 2y ago
The greatest form of art is the discussion on whether something is art or not. When you see a broken toilet sitting in an art gallery selling for 5 million dollars and someone thinks "I could do that, this is stupid", they have completely missed the point. The art is not the broken toilet, the art is selling it for 5 million dollars - which is something the complaining person definitly cannot do. That's the art.

deleted 2y ago

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jkaptur 2y ago

I think the article addresses your point: "The fact that some disciplines of an art form demand more precision doesn't mean the whole field shares those demands. It would be like saying best practices for photorealism should be applied to abstract expressionism, or how we approach technical writing should be the same as how we approach poetry." It wouldn't make sense to say "I've grown out of being impressed by complex prose" - you're welcome to enjoy Faulker or not, but he simply didn't have the same goals as the authors of the Stripe documentation, and judging both pieces of writing by the same standard is basically pointless (except, perhaps, as an art project of its own). I'd even apply this to coding itself. Day to day, I think everybody around me should be writing Blub, grug-brain code, but I'm happy there are people trying creative, weird languages and mind-bending ideas elsewhere and I'm curious what they find out.

culi 2y ago

I think publications practicing actual journalism like The Upshot and ProPublica do an incredible job of this. The focus is always clear presentation and accessibility above all else but its undeniable that so much of their work is also just gorgeous

BLKNSLVR 2y ago

I think that's the point of the article. Novel insight is almost a pre-requisite to determining how to present the data in a way that's quickly and easily understandable.