Sounds like ultrafinism or actualism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrafinitism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actualism

For some related ideas:

  - Bike-shedding [0]
  - the Law of Triviality [1]
  - "Hammock-Driven Design" - a 2010 talk by Rich Hickey [2]

[0] https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/bikeshedding

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc

For woodworking: https://www.lumberjocks.com/

I was looking at the archived version [0], and I had a question.

Regarding their PCB design (visible on the bottom of the page, with additional details here [1], could someone explain why the optic part is separated from the rest of the board by a long, wavy connection?

(I am trying to learn more about PCB design ideas and principles.)

Thanks!

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20220313204334/https://ploopy.co... [1] https://github.com/ploopyco/thumb-trackball/blob/main/hardwa...

> Regarding their PCB design (visible on the bottom of the page, with additional details here [1], could someone explain why the optic part is separated from the rest of the board by a long, wavy connection?

I think the pcb has to be slightly bent to accommodate the angled position of the track ball. Making it like that helps alleviate stresses on the pcb.

Not just slightly bent. See here: https://ploopy.co/mini-trackball/ Clever.

Very interesting! Thanks!

Makes sense! Thanks!

If I where to guess it would be to act as a spring to push the sensor against the ball

The plural of "sphinx" is "sphinges".

Only if you care about someone's version of correctness above that of being understood

> plural sphinxes or sphinges

Looks like either is correct, but I learned a new word!

Sphinxen

Sphinxers

The Mnemonic (which I heard from Merlin Mann's podcast) is to approximate the pronounciation of "Csikszentmihalyi" as "Chick sent me, hi"

The probably won't be relevant to most people here, but one book that changed how I approach my work (as a physician) was "Sapira's Art & Science of Bedside Diagnosis". It goes beyond the basics of physical diagnosis and delves into the history and statistics of various physical diagnostic techniques. It even describes a few low-tech techniques and skills which have been forgotten in the US medical system because of high-tech (and more expensive) imaging or lab testing regimens.

Incidentally, I found this book referenced in this article: "Why Should Doctors Read Medical Books?" by Dr. Eric Cassell [0]

[0] http://www.ericcassell.com/download/WhyShouldDoctorsReadMedi...

Hopefully we might see a new Stargate show being developed!

Could you recommend any open source projects which demonstrate good code UX as you describe? I would like to read through some such source code.

Not OP, but I would recommend backboneJS[1] or underscore[2]:

  [1]https://backbonejs.org/docs/backbone.html
  [2]https://underscorejs.org/docs/underscore-esm.html

The .NET framework is fantastic at this, you don't even need the underlying code, usually just the function signatures and Visual Studio autocompletion allows you to guess your way into finding the right classes and functions. Everything has long descriptive names (without the AbstractProxyFactory bloat from Java), follows conventions, arranged in a logical hierarchy and ample documentation available in intellisense.

I’m willing to bet that descriptive names is a red herring, and the real difference in code quality were engineers who cared enough to review for such things.

Having worked on a pre-Fortran77 code base, names are a big fucking deal. Half the code was written before variable names could be longer than six characters.

The pendulum is swinging back from the overreaction to that, Java's famous AbstractSingletonProxyFactoryBean. As awful as that name is, I will take it any day over L(IH+GV).

Thanks for your comment! It was a very enjoyable read, and in its style is reminiscent of some older mystery novel authors.