Stats for nerds
4recommend
6mentions
5people
2018–2026years
83% recommend17% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World [0] is a foundational text in the area of Appropriate Technology (cited here by others).
Essential reading alongside the Illich (also linked by others), Pye's Nature and Art of Workmanship [1], and Winner's "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" [2] for those interested in.... Let's call it an ecology OF technology?
And also the Papanek was probably the book that felt most like a forbidden text in undergraduate architecture school...
[0] https://archive.org/details/designforrealwor0000papa/page/n6...
- Even in the rural midwest in the early nineties you didn't get a big shop education in middle school, and I was on the academic track in high school. But we did a lot of woodworking in Scouts. Pretty much everyone grew up in families that worked with their hands. Some of us came factory work, the farm kids all learned how to use tools. And even the "rich" kids families owned small companies who worked in these areas.
Fast forward to the beginning of architecture school and we all had to draft by hand (which I had been doing in some capacity since 7th grade) and learn to and use the shop. We didn't learn to draft because it was a necessary skill anymore, but to learn 1. spatial thinking and in turn 2. how to turn ideas into real things you could communicate. Same with the making of physical models (even if you didn't use the shop).
These require the attention to detail and understanding of process necessary to break a sophisticated design idea down into individual actions (single lines, cuts, etc), and are of immense value even if you never touch a wood shop after undergraduate.
Even today, 25 years later and a time when we don't even necessarily teach 2d -CAD- drafting anymore we still require shop work, physical modeling, and hand drafting of ALL our students. So much that in a lot of places the first year of a 5 year professional Bachelor of Architecture doesn't even touch digital modeling of any sort.
If you want a foundational read that touches on deeper meanings around workmanship let me recommend David Pye's The Nature and Art of Workmanship[0].
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/319901.The_Nature_and_Ar...
- "Of what use is a new-born baby" Michael Faraday, asked about electricity.
There's also David Pye, and his thoughts on "useless work", and how that builds a better world. See "The Nature and Art of Workmanship".
- “The Nature & Art of Workmanship” by David Pye.
I picked it up related to my woodworking hobby, but also thought it was an interesting way to think about Risk in a tech company, and how (for example) more and more structure is built around releasing software to minimize risk and increase certainty of success.
I also really enjoyed:
“Joinery, Joists and Gender: A History of Woodworking for the 21st Century” by Deirdre Visser
“Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back” by Cory Doctorow, Rebecca Giblin
“Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World” by David Epstein
“How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States” by Daniel Immerwahr (this one prompted by honeymooning in Panama and learning the US used to control the canal)
- None, I keep em on my bookshelf.
I refer to my design books. My favorite of all time, is "The Nature and Art of Workmanship" by David Pye, given to me by a former woodturning mentor.
- I've been doing a lot of reading about craftsmanship and making things lately, and developing software for about 15 years now. I've found the following books and links to be really well-written and deeply considered covering craftsmanship, skilled work, modern and historical ideas and explorations of the topic, and generally an interesting listen/read:
Cræft, by Alexander Langlands - This is probably the least relevant to building software, but was the first book I read on the topic. It mostly deals with discussions of the history of making things like stone walls, waddle walls, roof thatching, and the like. It's a fun read that I like to put on while I'm working in the yard.
The Craftsman, by Richard Sennett - I just finished this book, and found it to be a fantastically interesting discussion of the idea of craftsmen, craftsmanship, doing skilled work, problem solving and the relationship to problem finding/discovery (this resonated with me as a software developer in a big way) and various facets of all of the above. The author discusses the development of the linux kernel as a reference for madern skilled craftsmanship, which was a pleasant surprise.
My next read is The Nature and Art of Workmanship, by David Pye. It's been referenced by a few other sources that I've watched or read, so I'm very much looking forward to it.
I also really enjoyed an episode of The Woodwright's Shop called "The Spirit of Woodworking", where Roy Underhill discusses (in a somewhat goofy/silly way) concepts like ego, presence of mind, mindfulness, tool usage and jigs, etc.. It really resonated with me, in particular when he discusses ego and how that can relate to what you're doing when building things, as I've found the removal of ego and shifting of perspective to be a huge part of growing as an "experienced" maker of things myself. I can't find the direct link to the video, but it's about half way down the list on this season: https://www.pbs.org/woodwrightsshop/watch-on-line/watch-seas...
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