- Author
- Emil Kowalski, Design Engineer
- Published
- Undated
- Kind
- Short personal essay
- Original
- emilkowal.ski/ui/developing-taste
- Subject
- Review, taste and expertise
- Themes
- Taste and judgment, Getting good
What it is
Emil Kowalski, a design engineer, wrote this short essay. It asks what good taste is and how to train it. It offers three habits and quotes Steve Jobs on exposure to great work.
What it says
- The essay argues that working software no longer differentiates a product, and taste does.
- It calls taste a trained instinct, not personal preference.
- First habit: surround yourself with great work and a curated list of tastemakers.
- Second habit: do not label things good or bad, but explain why they work.
- Third habit: practice the craft and seek feedback from the right people.
- Early work falling short of one's taste is described as a good sign.
What evidence it gives
The essay offers argument, analogy and quotations. It cites Anu Atluru, Steve Jobs, Julie Zhuo and Ira Glass. It gives no data, test or project example.
Interests and limits
The page promotes the author's course, aiforui.dev, in a banner. The essay gives no way to measure taste. AI appears only in a passing remark. It is short and rests on a few quotations.
Connections
These links are this wiki's own reading, not claims the sources make.
- A beginner's guide to modern classical music. Kowalski says taste grows from exposure and from explaining why things work. Muehlhauser's guide turns exposure into a route, from film scores toward harder music. Could anyone write that route for reading code?
- The Concept of the Aesthetic. Kowalski calls taste a trained instinct, and also asks you to explain why things work. Shelley traces the older thesis that aesthetic judgment is immediate. So software's talk about taste inherits a problem. Can an instinct stay immediate once it must give reasons?
- The cultural evolution of distortion in music (and other norms of mixed appeal). Bryant and Smaldino say distortion norms persist partly because groups must differ from each other. Kowalski tells readers to follow a curated list of tastemakers. Together they raise a sharp question. How much of taste in software is a marker of belonging?
- Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born. Kowalski tells readers to surround themselves with great work and tastemakers. Karlsson's essay describes solitude as a state free of others' opinions. Both concern how judgment forms. Perhaps taste needs exposure first, and then time away from it.