3 ms·

Do we need Swiss Army knives? For every tool that's included in the knife, you can get a much better stand-alone version that performs the same task much more e

Do we need Swiss Army knives? For every tool that's included in the knife, you can get a much better stand-alone version that performs the same task much more efficiently. So, what possible benefit could you get from having so many poor tools in a single place, that you can't improve by carrying around the equivalent set of separate high-quality tools? The Swiss knife ought to be such a terrible idea and nobody would ever use it, right?

mbrock 11y ago
The Swiss Army knives are of course known to be simple, beautiful, time- and battle-tested, coherent, reliable, etc. There may be better multi-purpose tools, but the ideal of the Swiss Army knife sets a high bar. Compare that to the browser... You can't bring a browser with you to the woods unless you have really good 3G. No single human can even understand everything a browser does. Browsers are huge, unwieldy, and change constantly. Army knives, like Zippo lighters, pride themselves on having near-Platonic designs that haven't changed in a hundred years. An intelligent extraterrestrial could grok them. A more appropriate metaphor for the browser is a tarpit, as in "Turing tarpit."
- TuringTest 11y ago
  I'd like to know how the first Swiss knives looked like... The solution would be to wait until our understanding of the technologies for presentation and software distribution over networks become stable so that they don't change as much, and then to build the smallest, leanest browser we're capable of. This doesn't mean that we don't have a need for browsers, as the article suggests; merely that we could use some better implementations.
  - lagadu 11y ago
    > I'd like to know how the first Swiss knives looked like... Taken from wikipedia: > During the late 1880s, the Swiss Army decided to purchase a new folding pocket knife for their soldiers. This knife was to be suitable for use by the army in opening canned food and disassembling the Swiss service rifle, the Schmidt–Rubin, which required a screwdriver for assembly. In January 1891, the knife received the official designation Modell 1890. The knife had a blade, reamer, can-opener, screwdriver, and grips made out of dark oak wood that was later partly replaced with ebony wood. Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Army_knife#/media/File:Wester_%26_Co_2.JPG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Army_knife#/media/File:W...

mbrock 11y ago

The Swiss Army knives are of course known to be simple, beautiful, time- and battle-tested, coherent, reliable, etc. There may be better multi-purpose tools, but the ideal of the Swiss Army knife sets a high bar. Compare that to the browser... You can't bring a browser with you to the woods unless you have really good 3G. No single human can even understand everything a browser does. Browsers are huge, unwieldy, and change constantly. Army knives, like Zippo lighters, pride themselves on having near-Platonic designs that haven't changed in a hundred years. An intelligent extraterrestrial could grok them. A more appropriate metaphor for the browser is a tarpit, as in "Turing tarpit."

TuringTest 11y ago
I'd like to know how the first Swiss knives looked like... The solution would be to wait until our understanding of the technologies for presentation and software distribution over networks become stable so that they don't change as much, and then to build the smallest, leanest browser we're capable of. This doesn't mean that we don't have a need for browsers, as the article suggests; merely that we could use some better implementations.
- lagadu 11y ago
  > I'd like to know how the first Swiss knives looked like... Taken from wikipedia: > During the late 1880s, the Swiss Army decided to purchase a new folding pocket knife for their soldiers. This knife was to be suitable for use by the army in opening canned food and disassembling the Swiss service rifle, the Schmidt–Rubin, which required a screwdriver for assembly. In January 1891, the knife received the official designation Modell 1890. The knife had a blade, reamer, can-opener, screwdriver, and grips made out of dark oak wood that was later partly replaced with ebony wood. Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Army_knife#/media/File:Wester_%26_Co_2.JPG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Army_knife#/media/File:W...