blog, (edited ) The Joy and The Pity of making your own stuff
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/12/the-joy-and-the-pity-of-making-your-own-stuff/I made my own tofu a few weeks ago1. I got soy milk, heated it, mixed in coagulants, drained it, pressed it, sliced it, then cooked it. And, you know what? I'm not sure it was worth the effort.
https://mastodon.social/deck/@Edent/111404530882763663
It tasted basically fine - no different to any shop bought tofu. It wasn't noticeably cheaper, it wasn't more nutritious, nor was it easier to store and prepare. I'm sure that if I spent several attempts I would gradually get closer to creating something comparable with the shop-bought product. And then what? Do I want to spend a few hours tending to my tofu whenever I feel like a stir-fry?
Cooking - and learning its chemistry - can be fun. It can also be a drudge. Sometimes I don't want to individually peel and slice a dozen ingredients. I want to push a few buttons on my microwave and then eat something.
The same extends to nearly every field. I could knit my own clothes and - no doubt - I would find the process interesting, relaxing, and entertaining. But for everyday wear, it would be a startling waste of my time to do so. Even if I avoid sweatshop labour and fast-fashion, a decent jumper is cheap and provides excellent utility.
But part of the joy of making - and mending - is that you get to learn a little slice of how the world works.
I first encountered Conway's Game of Life when I was a kid. I thought it was the hideously complicated thing which I simply was not qualified to understand. But after reading the biography of von Neumann it suddenly clicked. I understood its simplicity.
In order to test my understanding, I built my own Game of Life interpreter. It's nothing fancy. A few dozen lines of Python. It won't win any awards for efficiency nor for coding style. But it works.
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/gol.mp4
In the unlikely event that I ever need to use Life in production, I'm going to use a mature and well supported library. But by building my own toy implementation, I have a superficial understanding of what it is meant to do, where the pitfalls are, and what limitations I might encounter.
And that's my approach to most things. Learn how to make, understand the obvious problems, fall back to the mainstream option if it is easier than continuing.
- Yes, I am fully aware that I am a knit-your-own tofu, Guardian-reading, hipster, vegan stereotype. ↩
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/12/the-joy-and-the-pity-of-making-your-own-stuff/