When 3D printing became accesible I joined the subreddit for inspiration of what use I could put it to and the opposite happened. Everyone was making plastic toys and ironic reaches like an “egg holster”. Every so often someone would be able to fabricate a replacement part for something which I thought was the coolest. But beyond that. There wasn’t too much to be motivated by. I never got into it.
Here I wonder the same thing. Not that everything joyful must be productive. But if there was a way to apply this to something that was neat in the real world I think I’d be far more motivated to learn the skill. And enjoy it more.
I can empathize with your perspective. For everything genuinely useful thing like the Gridfinity storage ecosystem, there's a mountain of future landfill. There's only so many wifi router wall-mount brackets you need.
However, I am going to gently push back by pointing out that you're not connecting the dots between knowing how to use CAD to create solutions to problems, and having cheap 3D printers available that can make those solutions real.
In other words, your mistake might be looking externally for what you should be making. It's not so much a failure of imagination but not training your brain to make the possibility of creating objects one of the first steps on the path to problem solving. Perhaps a good analogy is how people go from asking GPT-4 things they've heard other people try to making asking GPT-4 about everything as normal as brushing your teeth.
So like, as much as it's awesome that I could realize I can print my own reels (for pick and place) from an STL off Thingiverse, my main use of my 3D printer at this point is to print off plastic prototypes of circuit boards and custom enclosures that I'm working on. Not only does this allow me to verify clearance (I actually saved myself five digits and months of pain recently by realizing that the 1/4" audio jacks would not allow my board to be inserted as designed) but it gives me something I can put in people's hands. I've found that, over many years, you can describe things to people and they will nod like they get it, and then when I put the real thing in their hands, they say something roughly like, "oh, this is what you meant". Which I used to find frustrating, and now I just accept it.
Right now, I'm working with the company in China that makes hard shell cases for basically every consumer product. They are sending me revisions of the insert that will hold everything safely. I print them off and then send photos and measurements back of how everything fits (or doesn't) which completely avoids the expensive and slow process of them making a mold, sending me a sample and me testing it. I've literally saved months and thousands doing this. It's awesome.
Similarly, you might have heard that injection molding is incredibly expensive to get started with and that there are fussy design rules you must follow. Well, engineers have recently clued in to the realization that we can essentially 3D print the molds, saving thousands and many lost weeks. Right now there's this crazy arbitrage where about 90% of product designers don't appear to realize that this is a thing, yet.
I could go on and on. The only takeaway is that as you normalize CAD and 3D printing as a go to tool the same way you probably think screwdrivers are pretty normal, you realize that you have more things you need a 3D printer for than things you need a screwdriver for. And that escalation can be really fast.
Addendum 1: Also, remember that it's not just 3D printing. Creating photo-realistic renders of something that doesn't exist yet can save the day. But there's also subtractive processes like CNC which is in some ways even more useful than additive processes like 3D printing. There's a Kickstarter right now for Carvera Air that a lot of folks should get in on.
Can anyone recommend the best books on this topic? I’m not as interested in weight loss as I am the mental health effects and other physiological factors.
Yet another surprisingly fantastic reason to hate Equifax:
- no security
- no competition
- no privacy
- no recourse
- unsubscribable spam
- terrible phone processes force having an online account… which has no security
And the other credit bureaus are just as bad (┛ಠ_ಠ)┛彡┻━┻
The are several insidious problems with trashing code are:
1. It becomes an impulse and ends up cropping up in places where code is not just perceived as shit, but also misunderstood. And once devs aren’t taking the time to fully understand code before judging it all is lost.
2. It takes mental resources to form the useless judgment and clouds the vision with its bias once it is made. Suddenly it’s more difficult to see the nuanced angles in the code since you’ve got a useless judgement taking up mental space and resources.
3. Again it’s habit forming and becomes a barrier to thinking freshly and creatively when faced with new code.
4. It’s negative.
5. As seen here in all the comments it is rediculously faulty.
6. ALL old code gets to be shit with varying degrees of speed. ALL code bases get old. If you want to work on an old codebase, it comes with the territory. You can be a grumpy old man about it, you can be a grumpy old man about anything, but the net effect is just making you a grumpier shittier developer.
In a similar way I have some coworkers who I know do not code as well because they don’t have the patience to be detail-oriented or pursue optimal solutions by any measure from code efficiency to maintainability. That’s about the worst thing I can think of to say about another programmer… and here’s the thing, they still occasionally write solutions borne of their own perspectives that I can learn from, their code still needs to be maintained, they sometimes do improve etc. If I let the author factor in I’m still going to miss things even if the prejudgment is right 90% of the time.
Finally, I think it is healthy to like people and find the good in them even if they are paddling against the boat, if you can’t lift them up or fire them it’s making the best of the situation. If you can understand that they are humans with their own things going on, that other humans could look at you exactly the same way, I think it lifts us all up.
Here I wonder the same thing. Not that everything joyful must be productive. But if there was a way to apply this to something that was neat in the real world I think I’d be far more motivated to learn the skill. And enjoy it more.