taste
What is taste, and why does it matter now?
Whether good and bad exist in made things, and how a maker comes to tell them apart.
FilterEveryone, all time184 from 93 people
- PG
Paul Graham quoted
Co-founder of Y Combinator and Viaweb
Their wordsOne very important thing that even the smartest people seem to have to learn from experience is taste in problems.
- 1 day earlier
- PG
Paul Graham quoted
Their wordsA company name that appeals to corporate buyers may not appeal so much to their customers.
- 3 days earlier
- PL
Pieter Levels quoted
Dutch bootstrapper who builds and runs his internet startups alone
Their wordsI'm noticing Westerners are continously having lower standards every year and seem to not even notice the declining quality standards of everything around them
- 4 days earlier
- JS
John Scalzi quoted
American science fiction novelist (Old Man's War
Their words“The Fisher King,” Gilliam’s splendid new effort, achieves that balance, muting the directors’ baroque visual edge and using that reclaimed, calm space to allow its characters depth. The result is synergistic: It is Gilliam’s best film.
↗And Now, For Their 35th Anniversary, My First Two Professional Movie Reviewswhatever.scalzi.com
- SP
Sunil Pai quoted
Systems and developer-tools engineer at Cloudflare as of 2026
Their wordspeople think I'm joking when I tell them that to develop taste for software they need to have brunch with their friends, watch old movies and find old records, walk around metropolitan cities and observe how the building styles lend to the personality of the people around them, but I'm so fkin dead serious.
- 3 days earlier
- KD
Kent C. Dodds quoted
Software engineer and educator
Their wordsAgents are really good at output now, and they're getting better fast. What they're not good at is knowing which output is worth producing in the first place.
↗You Own the Outcome: Product Engineering in the Age of AIkentcdodds.com 1st of 2 in this piece
- AR
Armin Ronacher quoted
Creator of Flask and Jinja
Our readingRust code is very pretty to look at, though the author suspects few others share this view.
Their wordsI might be the only person in the world that likes looking at Rust code. I think it's super pretty.
- 2 days earlier
- WM
W. David Marx quoted
Tokyo-based American writer; author of Ametora (2015)
Their wordsBut as Veblen explained, the "good taste" of each era is correlated with the particular makeup of elites.
↗Good Taste is Not What’s Oppressing Us in 2026culture.ghost.io 1st of 2 in this piece
- WM
W. David Marx quoted
Their wordsToday the taste for “high art” has become extremely marginal, almost exclusively limited to a particular subset of knowledge workers.
↗Good Taste is Not What’s Oppressing Us in 2026culture.ghost.io 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 1 day earlier
- ZM
Zvi Mowshowitz quoted
Writes Don't Worry About the Vase
Their wordsI strongly agree with David Perell that it is sad that we used to make it a priority to make a variety of things beautiful, and now we don’t and merely make them functional. The big one is architecture, but this also applies to things like tickets, as per Ted Gioia’s The Banishment of Beauty From Everyday Life. It’s worse than a crime, it’s a mistake. That beauty buys so much goodwill.
- ZM
Zvi Mowshowitz quoted
Their wordsI agree with Tyler Cowen that it does seem like movies peaked in specifically 1999, as per the speech in The Matrix about that being the pinnacle of your civilization. Then movies got worse in key ways, including too many franchises wasting top budgets and talent. Now movies are getting better again. 2026 has been fantastic.
- 1 day earlier
- PS
Peter Sellis quoted
Former head of product at Discord
Our readingOne way to gauge a candidate's taste is to ask about the things they built and never shipped.
Their wordsone way you can kind of like get at somebody's taste is uh when you're interviewing them is just ask them about some of the things they built that they never shipped.
↗90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter Sellisyoutube.com 10th of 18 in this recording
- PS
Peter Sellis quoted
Their wordsexercising that kind of muscle of like saying no uh of restraint is probably one of the easiest like one of the few like muscles of taste you can exercise. If if a museum has all of their collection on the walls, then the curator hasn't done anything.
↗90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord’s product chief | Peter Sellisyoutube.com 11th of 18 in this recording
- 1 day earlier
- CM
Craig Mod quoted
Writer, photographer and software maker based in Japan
Their wordsThere are no other writers who have done this as successfully as Annie, whose particular angle on literature and nature was sui generis.
↗[RIDGELINE] Walking with Anniecraigmod.com 1st of 2 in this piece
- 4 days earlier
- TL
Tobias Lütke quoted
Co-founder and CEO of Shopify
Their wordstaste um and judgment um are the skills that have always been valuable but now will get to the limit. I think it's better to spend your teenage years now cultivating like understanding taste.
↗Tobi Lütke: The Skills AI Makes More Valuableyoutube.com 10th of 26 in this recording
- TL
Tobias Lütke quoted
Their wordsbecause beauty is actually how our intuition communicates with us.
↗Tobi Lütke: The Skills AI Makes More Valuableyoutube.com 21st of 26 in this recording
- 1 day earlier
- SH
Steve Huff quoted
Gear reviewer who publishes long-form hi-fi audio…
Their wordsYou can spend more on an integrated amp in the ultra-high-end price range, but I do not feel you will necessarily get "better" sound-just something different.
↗Luxman L-100 Centennial Review. Class A Returns.stevehuffphoto.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
- PK
Paul Krugman quoted
Trade economist, Nobel laureate in 2008 for his work…
Their wordsAnd everything we know about climate change suggests that what we’ve seen so far is just a foretaste of the disasters to come.
↗The MAGA Plot(s) to Destroy Humanitypaulkrugman.substack.com
- 3 days earlier
- PC
Patrick Collison quoted
Co-founder and CEO of Stripe and co-founder of the Arc Institute
Their wordsArchitects oppose the kinds of buildings that most people like.
- 1 day earlier
- RS
Robby Stein quoted
Vice President of Product for Google Search
Our readingWhen almost anything can get built, a product manager's true value lies in judgement and taste.
Their wordsAnd I think in some cases that's still true, but really if in the world of today, almost anything you can think of can get built, it's more clear to me than ever that the actual true value of PM is actually around judging. It's around taste.
↗What it takes to be a top PM today | Robby Stein (Google Search) (Lenny & Friends Summit, San Francisco, 10 September 2026)youtube.com 1st of 11 in this recording
- KD
Katie Dill quoted
Head of Design at Stripe
Their wordsWhy should that matter how it was made? It doesn't matter to the users how it was made. It matters to them if it's good or not.
↗How to scale intent, quality, and artistry with Al | Katie Dill (Stripe) (Lenny & Friends Summit, San Francisco, 10 September 2026)youtube.com 4th of 12 in this recording
- RS
Robby Stein quoted
Our readingA product's craft probably comes down to whether it works without pain and how it makes people feel.
Their wordsAnd there's two things that I think drive this. One is does the product work perfectly? And is there any user pain, basically, in that experience? And the second is how does it make me feel?
↗What it takes to be a top PM today | Robby Stein (Google Search) (Lenny & Friends Summit, San Francisco, 10 September 2026)youtube.com 6th of 11 in this recording
- GC
Geoff Charles quoted
Chief Product Officer at Ramp; Ramp's first product hire
Our readingProduct teams still need a tastemaker who does what AI cannot and holds the bar for great product.
Their wordsUltimately, you need someone who's holding the steering wheel and doing things that AI cannot do and holding the bar for what great product, great taste looks like.
↗What product looks like when coding is solved | Geoff Charles (Ramp CPO) (Lenny & Friends Summit, San Francisco, 10 September 2026)youtube.com 11th of 13 in this recording
- 2 days earlier
- AH
Ann Handley quoted
Wall Street Journal bestselling author on marketing and writing
Their wordsInformation is ridiculously abundant. Your judgment, taste, and perspective are literally all you have to work with now.
↗Make Posteingänge Sexy Again: 9 Ingredients for an Email Readers Want to Openannhandley.com 1st of 3 in this piece
- 1 day earlier
- DD
Daniel W. Drezner quoted
Political scientist writing Drezner’s World on international relations
Their wordsOnce the entire plot is revealed in shows like this one, it can be a letdown, flattening what has happened previously.
↗My Frustration With Puzzlebox Televisiondanieldrezner.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- PL
Pieter Levels quoted
Their wordsespecially with AI now I'd say anyone can try, and non-technical people with the best ideas, creativity/taste and understanding of whatever cultural zeitgeist we're in can win
- 3 days earlier
- MW
Matt Webb quoted
British designer and technologist
Their wordsTo make the series is a bonfire of human creative effort, think of what could have been done instead.
↗Harry Potter again againinterconnected.org 1st of 2 in this piece
- MW
Matt Webb quoted
Their wordsBut the difference between great acting and school acting is not merely a matter of magnitude. It is something else entirely: the true actor is a shapeshifter.
↗Harry Potter again againinterconnected.org 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 3 days earlier
- JZ
Jeffrey Zeldman quoted
Web designer and writer
Our readingPeople with poor taste or judgment tend to cluster together and reinforce each other's choices.
Their wordsM*sk must have dug the idea, because he implemented it immediately-proving, as if we weren't already drowning in evidence, that people with bad taste run in packs.
↗Tales o’ Tech: Suffering Foolszeldman.com 1st of 2 in this piece
- 6 days earlier
- DH
David Heinemeier Hansson quoted
Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals
Their wordsThe other thing I'd say is that most organizations don't know what they want. They don't know how to make it better. They're not bottlenecked on implementation. They're bottlenecked on ideas. They're bottlenecked on vision. They're bottlenecked on taste. And if you don't have those element in excess of your implementational capacity, it doesn't help. So you can make a lot of shitty ideas come true, then what?
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 6th of 41 in this recording