[saxelsen]

I used to resonate with the word "taste" as a distinguishing factor between good and bad quality, but a comment on HN some months ago about one of the many blog posts that talks about taste really nailed it:

"Taste" is just the degree to which two people value the same things.

When someone is rated as having "good taste" it just means that the person rating them values a lot of the same qualities.

The more I thought about it, the more that applies everywhere: Food, wine, clothes, architecture, software design, etc.

[cedws]

I would argue that taste is the ability to reason about one's own preferences.

A person who doesn't consider themself to have a taste in music and listens casually won't really be able to reason about why they like the music they do other than "I like the band" or "I like the song."

A person with taste in music is going to have listened to a larger variety, be able to speak passionately about it, and justify why they like and dislike particular music.

One is a boneheaded consumer, one is a fanatic.

Similarly with wine, you can't claim you've got taste when you've been drinking only red your whole life.

[SpicyUme]

I struggle with the music one. I listen to a lot of different music, used see live music at least once a week, and have some strong opinions. I still struggle to explain music to others or why I enjoy certain artists/songs.

It is like the details don't register in a usable way, where one of my good friends will tell me he likes a band because of the guitar tone or the drummer's technique or something else that I struggle to explain or even pick out of the music. I wish I could explain my preference better.

[hammock]

What music do you listen to?

[weitendorf]

Software is a bit different from music or wine because taste can mean “has the right function and attention to detail and aesthetic and interface and data model and conforms to my expectations and has a certain kind of API and has documentation with actual examples and uses the right JavaScript framework and”, whereas taste in wine can mean “has a blend of flavors that I particularly like” and taste in music can mean “pushes the boundaries of its genre and introduces genuinely new sounds”. Most but not all of what we want out of software is about function and utility and intuitive UX.

But wine and music and other subjective consumption-hobbies that enable snobbery are much less grounded in practicality and tend to become arenas for novelty/pure experimentation (charitably) or countersignaling and identity-building (uncharitably). So you end up with situations where the people who “have good taste” consistently associate themselves with music that sounds legitimately bad to regular listeners or never gets popular enough to be recognizable because it’s about being better than casual music listeners more than it is about the music to them. Or, proclaiming that no taste preferences for icecream products are worthy of respect unless they come from someone that regularly consumes pistachio ice cream - it’s not about the ice cream to them.

That’s why we can say “this UI needs to be collapsible and expanded by default” about software - we want it to be a certain way. The type of people who relish in their taste in music and ice cream don’t tend to say things like “maybe cut the bridge 10 seconds and add some kind of duet with reverb” or “it used too much nitrate fertilizer for loamy soil and ended up kind of woody (for ice cream)” because they want themselves to be a certain way.

[sagarm]

There's plenty of room for creativity, and therefore taste, when developing software that meets functional requirements.

[weitendorf]

I don’t dispute that. What I’m saying is that functional and even non-functional taste in software tends to be grounded in how it can more effectively serve our needs. In a way that’s actually a more profound kind of creativity and taste than something that tries to just look cool.

OTOH music and anything else snob-adjacent aren’t grounded in serving our direct needs to some other end the same way software tends to be, so to them “taste” could be reducible to just a favorite flavor or becomes a kind of status/value/oneupmanship. The products are consumed directly as ends unto themselves so people who have strong opinions on their comparative tastefulness care about that for different reasons than they do software.

[hug]

Taste is fashion, baby.

Taste has nothing to do with your awareness of your preference, and cannot exist in a social vacuum.

Taste has everything to do with others opinions of your preference: If your preferences, on display, are enough to bring many others to agree that your preferences are similar to their preferences, you have good taste. If your preferences, when encountered, are enough to bring others preferences into alignment with yours, you have excellent taste. If you can recognise what is the new hotness before anyone else does, you have even better taste. You don't have to be able to justify it, you just have to know it.

You don't need to be aware of this to be happening. You can have incredible taste while just sitting around and doing your own thing.

You can have incredible taste in only red wine without ever tasting white. You can have good taste in only hip-hop and not jazz, or in impressionist art and not abstract expressionism, or any other number of things.

If I know that your recommendation for a category is going to be good, then I know you have good taste.

[Nicook]

no, taste is ability to evaluate. You can still consume trash even if you have taste.

[kayodelycaon]

There are two definitions of taste:

1. How good or bad something is relative to some standard.

2. How well you're able to understand the medium and identify the differences between things.

[throw4847285]

That's not true. The best evidence that somebody has taste is that they introduce something to you (a band, a movie, etc.) that you've never encountered, but they are correct that you love it. But whatever they chose to share might not be their favorite work of art. They just knew that you would like it, because not only do they have a well formed sense of what they like and why, they can read other people the same way. They can find enjoyment in a huge range of art, because they can tap into what about it is enjoyable rather than reflexively labeling things good or bad. That is the definition of people with taste.

[xKingfisher]

I think a distinction can be made between bad taste and different tastes.

One of the greatest developers I've worked with, who I learned a lot from and respect immensely, has extremely different tastes in software from me. To the point where I wouldn't say I think he has good taste.

But, his work still has a distinct style and intention. I can tell anytime I come across libraries he had a hand in. I understand what the code is doing and why is is correct, even when I disagree with it.

And I think that is what is important. When working with more junior people, I'll ask them why they did things a certain way and will generally me be with a "well, idk" of some variant of path dependence.

I think developing that intentionality as a developer is important. Which does come with some amount of aesthetic, and I think taste is a defensible metaphor.

[nonethewiser]

I actually see no difference in the two definitions unless you also slide in the idea that things are more relative and less clearly good/bad with the second. That seems to be the natural implication and the real difference, more so than the shift to "valuing."

- a distinguishing factor between good and bad quality

- the degree to which two people value the same things

If we don't also accept that implication, then its just the same thing. People thinking good things are good vs people thinking bad things are good.

[andy99]

I understood “taste” here to mean opinions. It’s not “good taste” it’s just “some taste”. IMO there are many ways to express taste that are not tinkering, such as preferentially selecting things and my personal favourite, complaining :) Nevertheless I think he means opinions rather than some universally good taste.

[chrisweekly]

Haha, "complaining" reminded me of someth that made me laugh a few years back, along the lines of:

  Things I HATE:  
  1. complaints  
  2. lists  
  3. strong opinions  
  4. hypocrisy

[ElevenLathe]

Always loved this Michael Caine line from the third Austin Powers movie: "There's two things I can't stand in this world: people who are intolerant of other peoples' cultures, and the Dutch."

[kingkongjaffa]

I'd like to refine this a bit because I agree, but in a slightly different way.

> I understood “taste” here to mean opinions.

Good taste is the ability to have nuanced and specific opinions.

This comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45740478 said it well:

> 2. How well you're able to understand the medium and identify the differences between things.

Combining these two ideas: Taste is the ability to understand the topic/craft/medium well enough to have a strong opinion about what good is, and usually that opinion is similar to other well experienced practitioners.

In software engineering it's the ability to recognize an elegant solution that avoids pitfalls that the observer may have experienced in the past.

In other fields it might be that someone with good taste can better understand and appreciate the process or journey to get to whatever $thing is being evaluated, and they appreciate the $thing more because they can empathize more fully with the creator, compared to a layman.

[melagonster]

I agree with you. But taste is a skill that should be learned. People who have better taste can select better stuff by their skill.

[al_borland]

I feel this is kind of missing the point that was being made. “Better” is subjective.

If taste is being learned, who is the teacher? Are you learning about your own tastes or adopting the tastes of the teacher?

Who has better taste, the user of spaces or tabs? There is no right answer, just those who agree with you and those who don’t.

[dbalatero]

I just want to work with someone who can clearly articulate why they chose tabs or spaces (in this example), not someone who gives a blank stare. E.g I want someone with their own tastes.

[al_borland]

I agree fully with this. I was on a project once and the manager leading it would tell me to do things I thought were in pour taste. I gave him a list of reasons why I thought a different direction would be better. He couldn’t backup his opinions at all, but thought he was right based on his title. Eventually he got sick of fighting with me and installed a PM to deliver his baseless and tasteless opinions. That PM said he thought my design was better, but his job was to be the mouthpiece for the manager to push the worse design. He didn’t have any power, so me pushing back on what he said was a waste of breath.

People with strong opinions, who can’t back them up with reasons why they hold them, is a huge pet peeve of mine. This project was the most clear example of that.

With the above scenario, I eventually just made what he wanted, then secretly made what I wanted as well. This was an internal product. I told a few people about my secret page. Over the next couple months, 100% of the team was using my secret page and no one wanted to use the manager’s design. Once he was no longer paying attention to the project, I swapped out my secret page for the main page and it’s been that way ever since.

[layer8]

Some tastes are acquired.

[a-french-anon]

Absolute aesthetic relativism is the complete opposite of "thinking about", it's giving up to the cult of modernity, an intellectual shortcut to avoid the complicated and controversial question of "I instinctively know that objective good/bad exists but what is it, to what extent can it be formalized and separated from my opinion, how does it interact with subjective qualities?".

That shortcut leads to a dead end that only contains the rotting corpse of truth and integrity.