What I think I'm hearing from Glen is that while it's nice to use
power-planers and router tables to shape wood, one should know how to
use the right type of hand-plane, chisels, and scrapers in case you
lose electric power.
Well, I dunno. Several points along these lines.
- What is foundational for one is not foundational for another. As an
example, for drum music, I may worry a great deal about the welds on
the tacks, the speed of sound in the wood, distribution of force
laterally in a drum shell, various details about adhesives and even what
they fed the cow that supplied the cowhide, but that doesn't necessarily
make me a better drummer than somebody worried about kinesthesiology of
the forarm and shoulder and how it relates to the mass and dimensions of
their drumsticks.
- Knowing too well what is apparently foundational may prevent you from
innovating. For example in wood joinery instead of cutting biscuits, I
may know enough about epoxy strength to design a situation in which a
bead of epoxy is its own biscuit and thus make a stronger joint that I
would be able to if I had kept to wood joinery fundamentals.
- The ability to perform a task at all depends on the capabilities at
hand. In the power tool example, losing electricity does not
necessarily mean one can effectively fall back to hand tools. It such
a case it may no longer be economical to perform the task at all, given
alternatives.
- Then there's time. One could of course say that flint knapping an
obsidian hand axe from scratch will make you more proficient with a hand
chisel. At some point one has a task to do, a time constraint, and a
power planer at hand.
That said, yes, its good to know some hand drafting before you get into
CAD. But "fundamentals" and "foundations" can be slippery concepts.
Carl
On 2/17/14, 10:39 AM, Parks, Raymond wrote:
What I think I'm hearing from Glen is that while it's nice to use
power-planers and router tables to shape wood, one should know how to
use the right type of hand-plane, chisels, and scrapers in case you
lose electric power.
In terms closer to most on the list - programming in the scripting
language du jour is fine for productivity, but just in case it falls
out of fashion and loses support, you should be able to fall back on a
HLL, and, just in case, assembly.
In both of my examples, learning the more primitive methods means that
one learns the foundational knowledge that makes using the modern
methods easier and higher in quality.
Ray Parks
Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager
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On Feb 13, 2014, at 2:40 PM, glen wrote:
TL;DR -- but you asked...
Well, I was being purposefully provocative, of course. When serious, I
advocate agnosticism. Use everything as often as you can.
For me, it's less about diversity and more about core skills. In my
experience (which is admittedly peculiar), the primary skill is the
ability to try something out, figure out the basic use cases, then move
on to the next tool. If your purpose is to get something done, then use
the first tool you try/learn that actually works. Do the job; move on.
If, however, your purpose is to understand, then use as many tools as
you can, taken to the extent of some predefined test.
RE: platforms. It seems to me platforms are primarily a way to avoid
learning, especially the more closed they are. Ease of use is the bogey
man. It's the scapegoat upon which all platform closures hang their
debt to society. This is why I cringe when I hear things like "They
[Apple's devices] are also the easiest to learn to use and the most
durable." This is antithetic to what I would teach a child. If you
always/only use the easiest tools to use, then you're only hurting
yourself. And you're setting yourself up to be exploited by nefarious
agents.
Sure, it's OK to (mostly) use easy to use tools... but only AFTER you've
become at least adequate at using the other tools in the same domain.
(In fact, anyone who claims something like OS X is the easiest or most
intuitive OS is just ASKING to be grilled about, say, the difference
between Gnome 3 and Unity. And if they show _any_ hint that they know
those aren't operating systems, then we get to grill them on Plan 9 or
the Hurd ... or maybe VMS if I'm feeling generous.) My point being that
ubiquity = ignorance.
If I were to try to write it down, it would read more like a book for
kindergarten. Pay attention. Poke everything that looks like it'll do
something when you poke it. Don't be afraid to break it. Actually, try
to break it. You learn more about a thing by learning what breaks it
than by doing what it's supposed to do. ("Bending" is the real
cognitive target, of course. http://www.moogfest.com/circuit-bending)
You learn even more if you try to fix it after you broke it.
Anyway, my main point is that if you want to "survive" the next "mass
extinction" event, learn the _domains_ and their use cases. The
devices/tools that implement the use cases are interchangeable and
largely irrelevant.
On 02/13/2014 11:49 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
Good points. But diversity? Do you buy into that?
I certainly use services outside of Google. Twitter mainly (have
but don't
use Facebook) but many forums which are not Google Groups.
I try to use cross platform apps where possible. Sublime, for
example, as
a text editor. Chrome/Firefox. Terminal w/ standard CLI. Dropbox
(mac/windows/linux) for files. iOS apps that are cross platform for the
most part, although my cant-live-without-it Italian dictionary is
iOS only
and they tell me that it's the best choice for their market.
Possibly iOS
folks are more willing to pay? They seemed sincere.
The article was about survival in a limited extent: how to deal with
being
jerked around by the demise of a popular service or platform.
How do you deal with it? Could you teach a non-techie to follow
your lead?
Would write down a simpler set of rules that are easy to follow?
--
?? glen
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