Why software engineers like woodworking (2021) | Hacker News Reader

Why software engineers like woodworking (2021)

zainrizvi.io

226 pointsmooreds175 comments

The things I like about woodworking:

* It's tangible. I can put in a couple of hours of work and then step back and see exactly what's been accomplished.

* The techniques are hundreds/thousands of years old. New tools come along (not as quickly as they do in software), but at the end of the day, we've pretty much decided on a handful of best ways to do things. There's always new stuff to learn, but you're very rarely inventing something from whole cloth.

* And my personal favorite: Every project has a definite end. That jewelry box or coffee table is FINISHED. Sure, after a time I might put a new coat of finish on something, but once a piece leaves my shop it's done. I'm not forever tweaking this or that about it, trying to make it something it was never meant to be or tearing pieces of it apart to redo the joinery or whatever.

Covered in sawdust right now from building a pull-out drawer for a kitchen cabinet. It came out square and the joints were tight enough to hold it together for the dry fit. Very satisfying. I am still mostly terrible at this.

> It's tangible.

This is the best part for me. Programming often reminds me of the "I sell air"[1] scene from City Slickers. The down side of this is that there's no undo. You have 300 operations to step through and if you mess one up you probably need to start over.

> The techniques are hundreds/thousands of years old.

Watching Clickspring recreate the Antikythera mechanism[2] has made it obvious to me that loads of secret knowledge was trapped in guilds and missing from the historical record as a result. You can do so much with basic hand tools. The down side is that there's so much temptation to buy expensive shit. Or worse, think you can't build anything because you don't have $15,000 worth of pro tools. I really needed a thickness planer on this project.

> Every project has a definite end.

So much. Fuck maintenance. No down side

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77xaqFyFET0

2. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0...

    >> It's tangible.

    > You have 300 operations to step through and if you mess one up you probably need to start over.

This, but ;)

I really like that you don't have undo but you still don't have to start over. You have to learn how to build things and what to do when you inevitably eff up and how to cover it up! And then you go around the house and check how the builders/tradespeople covered up their mistakes or how they were simply never as perfect to begin with as you think you need to be.

The difference being that unfortunately you will know forever where you effed up and even if you cover it up so that nobody will ever notice unless you tell them, you will be able to see it.

I can still see the tile in the bathroom being siliconed in instead of grouted where we opened it up to allow access when re-piping the house vs. the regular grout even though objectively it's exactly the same color and even the texture is close enough. I siliconed it just in case because this was the second to last extra tile, so if we ever need to open it up again, I want to be able to just cut the silicone vs. destroying the tile like the contractor did to gain access the first time.

Same when I do woodworking. I will always remember/see the gap that was too wide after I cut it incorrectly and filled it in with sawdust and glue from the exact same wood. I keep a bunch of containers w/ the different wood types' sawdust for just these cases.

I like that it forces me to really be smart about planning out those 300 operations, plan around constraints like tool/material availability, and then sometimes even re-evaluate mid stream when you realize your plan was off a little

> The down side of this is that there's no undo. You have 300 operations to step through and if you mess one up you probably need to start over.

This is why I love ceramics and wheel throwing in particular. It's relatively quick, but at any step something can go wrong, especially at my skill level. Sometimes you throw the same piece, apply the same glaze and it comes out quite different. It prevents you from getting too attached to any one piece and forces me towards a zen-like attitude. In some way it makes it even more a balanced to software engineering.

I really like this aspect of ceramics.

Plus, before the clay goes into the kiln and is glazed it can always be recycled, so no guilt.

Yes, the recycling aspect really helps with how viable it is to not get attached to a piece till it's done.

> You have 300 operations to step through and if you mess one up you probably need to start over.

Only if you’re a perfectionist. You can always adjust the plan or do some annoying work with glueing. And usually it’s one part of a bigger thing that can be redone individually. Unless you’re sculpting a giant piece of wood like marble

> You have 300 operations to step through and if you mess one up you probably need to start over.

I’ve heard a couple of people say that the #1 skill of master woodworkers is fixing mistakes. Keep at it and you (usually) won’t have to start over.

I help teach woodworking and there is a lot of truth in this. There are very few mistakes in wood that cannot be fixed.

I do 'model engineering' which is mostly metalwork, and it's about the same.

You end up with something tangible but it really hurts when you make a mistake many hours into a part and have to scrap it and start again. Especially if it's not plain old steel, so just cost a lot. You do learn to save a part from some types of mistakes but it's not always possible.

I think it's great that software lets you build castles in the air and mistakes generally only cost time, and fixes or improvements can be incremental but it does get old when many projects are scrapped before being used so you feel like you're just wasting time.

I find the 'no undo' and a perfectionistic streak add immeasureably to the stress of my 'hobby' but now I have finally finished my steam loco after 10 years I do like looking at it and driving it.

> ... I have finally finished my steam loco after 10 years I do like looking at it and driving it.

That sounds fascinating! Could you share some more about your project?

"Blondyhacks" on YouTube is currently in the process of build model steam locomotive. You might want to check that out.

Or one of their previous projects if you'd like to binge start-to-finish.

It's about 1/11 scale of the real one, so the next size up from what Blondiehacks is building, and a bit more complicated and detailed. But essentially the same thing, a steam loco that runs on coal & water and works just like the real thing in every respect. See https://i.imgur.com/GuHR2j6.jpg

It can haul me and about 8 or 10 other people. It's a pretty popular hobby - look for live steam on YouTube.

I got bitten with the metalwork bug during lockdown.

I spend most of my time making imperfect tools that I could buy cheaper. It's just so satisfying to build something yourself from a design though.

Being able to take soft silver-steel, machine a point, then harden it with a blowtorch is just magic.

Even just staring at commercially made parts and reverse engineering how/if I could make it on my little hobby lathe with the bar stock I have is really fun.

My favourite projects have been small custom parts for my bikes. Nothing is perfect but it all works and you can save loads of money[1].

1. Such lies! I haven't saved any money because it's always "if I just had this 200 quid tool I could make this one time 20 quid part". Best to acknowledge it's just a fun hobby. :D

I hate making tools rather than models but I know tools is the hobby for many people and enjoy watching other people make them on YouTube.

I agree, being able to harden steel or anneal copper or cut threads is awesome :)

I love having the machines & tools. It's nice to know I can make something, and it's even come in handy for work a few times despite the fact I'm a software developer - brackets or adapters that must be metal and not 3D printed.

You will have saved money at some point... perhaps 40 years from now!

I'll never recoup what I spent on the machines, but other people spend that much on travel and hobbies (like motorcycles) every couple of years so it's not an outlandishly expensive hobby.

Now I want to see a YouTube series where they show how to the same task with different tools. Here is how we use a planer. Now we will do the same thing using a router sled. Now the same thing with some hand planes. And so forth.

Jonathan Katz Moses, Stumpy Nubs, and The Wood Whisperer all have different videos like that. And then there's all kinds of channels that do pro, journeyman, novice builds of the same idea, sometimes as competition.

> You have 300 operations to step through and if you mess one up you probably need to start over.

As long as this is a hobby and not a job, you don't "need" to start over. If you mess up you got a lot of very useful scrap wood for the next project.

How did you build drawers without a planer or atleast a jointer? Did to buy pre surfaced wood or spend hours with a bench plane?

I actually built the frame from crappy construction 2x4s milled down to 3/4 x 3 because this is mostly a proof of concept and learning project.

You can use a table saw to do a decent approximation of what a planer or a jointer does by fixing the work pice to a sled. This worked kind of poorly for me, but that was my fault, and next time I'll do a better job. I spend a lot of time sanding out saw marks and never got a great result.

Tamar uses a planer in this video for the first side, but I think you can see how you could do it just with a table saw, for small pieces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWOB-WIDkOs

You could do maybe 3.5 inch pieces max on the table saw (blade height). Surely the front face of the drawer is bigger than that?

That's exactly right. Only works for small pieces. My drawer is a pull-out tray type drawer that I am adding to a big cabinet.

I spent weeks practicing dovetails with a Japanese pull saw until they fit just right. It was very satisfying. A kind of feeling I could never achieve writing code.

I suppose also the table it rests on stays horizontal, the hands that hold it stay similar enough, and there's no subscription fees to the app store :-D

Tell that to my grandfather, who at 73 is still adding onto his house that he built when he was like 20 :)

Houses are more like software projects than furniture.

He does mostly woodwork.

All three of your points are also things that I love about growing my own food.

(Reason 4: it tastes better!)

This. These are the exact same reasons why I like the task of lawn mowing! There is a begin state and a clear finished state. The satisfaction of reaching “finished” cannot be overstated.

Which is exactly the opposite of software development :-). I always liked woodworking and hope some time in the future to have my own space where I can start and build things as well. One drawback I been told many times is that you need a lot of tools and they are not cheap...

It's not lost on me that those are the opposite of software engineering!

>One drawback I been told many times is that you need a lot of tools and they are not cheap...

There's truth to that. You will find no shortage of people in the woodworking community that insist that you can do woodworking with a couple of hand tools in a small space. I don't think they're necessarily wrong, but that's going to be a very limiting situation as far as projects go. Depending on your personality and wants, maybe that would work for you. But it's not for me. At a minimum I want floor space for a decent sized table saw and a workbench. Those are going to take up the most real estate among the core things.

And yes, it's not a cheap hobby. If you buy used tools, you can save a lot. But you've also go to remember that lumber is pretty expensive too. You can save money on lumber by buying rough-sawn stock but then you need to spend some more money on tools to process it (a good investment once you've decided the hobby is one you want to stick with!)

“Those who work with their minds must rest with their hands.”

Japanese woodworkers would spend the first half of the day sharpening their tools. The secret of Japanese woodworking is the steel they used…and their insistence on air dried straight grained softwoods. It helps make their precision joinery possible. It was also a technique designed for longevity so you could remove a piece from a hundreds year old temple, exactly replicate it and put a new one in. No metal fasteners meant no hidden weak spots due to rust which would fail in an earthquake.

I sometimes think about how good software quality would be if we all wrote test cases in the morning and coded in the afternoon. Motorola used to have a processes something like this…write and review tests at the same time as requirements are being approved, well before any coding starts. The number of defects we’d find in final system test was very small.

I mean test driven development is a the practice used by many organizations and individuals.

I’m so bored and tired by the afternoon and ready to go outside or do something stimulating that I’d never get anything down

They did use metal fasteners, just sparingly, because iron was expensive and often of poor quality. Later on even when quality and availability improved, laws were introduced to limit the use of metal fasteners, largely for political and economic reasons.

One of the big factors in wood selection in Japan is rot and insect resistance. Japan has very high humidity and buildings were open much of the time, demanding resistance to mold, termites, etc.

Another big factor was time. Fast growing species allowed quicker processing, which was helpful considering Japanese buildings have historically not been built to last. Some do last a long time, but most famous Japanese buildings have actually burned down many times, sometimes dozens. Edo (Tokyo) was well known for basically the whole city catching on fire fairly often.

They did use hardwoods, too, but where hard wood was necessary or useful, like in certain beams or components that needed hard wearing.

I was once asked: "Are you a rock climbing mathematician or a cat mathematician?". It was a joke designed to break the ice, but it turns out that 3/5 of that class were climbers, the others were enthusiastic cat owners. No outliers.

I'll add software engineering and woodworking to the list.

I wonder what other surprising relationships there are out there.

The reverse holds too: I know more people with PhD's through climbing than any other area of my life that's intuitively nerdier.

Because it's the complete opposite of being a PhD student I'd imagine.

A good route is a puzzle you solve with your mind and body; I'm not sure it's all that different, except for not having an advisor.

N.B. Never aspired to an advanced degree, but I know a lot of people with them.

> Because it's the complete opposite of being a PhD student I'd imagine.

I'd rather guess the following relationship: IQ is positively correlated with "openness to experience" in the five-factor model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

Concerning this particular trait: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Op...

"Open [to expererience] people can be perceived as unpredictable or lacking focus, and more likely to engage in risky behaviour or drug-taking. Moreover, individuals with high openness are said to pursue self-actualisation specifically by seeking out intense, euphoric experiences."

Or: it’s a good excuse to procrastinate another day and grade those exams next week.

HA.

That's actually a remarkable statistic.

It would've been more statistically remarkable had there been more than 5 people in that class.

Are you a woodworking software engineer or a musician software engineer?

Actually, that is probably the same group.

Yes and yes.

Hmm, true. Both.

Software Engineer by trade. My hobbies are playing music (clarinet and trumpet), woodworking (as a medieval reenactor on ren faires) and climbing (indoor bouldering). I also own two cats.

I didn't think I'd be that predictable...

Rock climbing is the new golf, and tech workers are the new big shots that have replaced stodgy investment bankers. I never mention that I'm a rock climber anymore. It brands you as a techfuck these days.

No evidence has been presented that woodworking is disproportionately popular among programmers. I bet if you go to some carpentry meetups you will not find a high number of programmers. Programmers are not special for having hobbies. If you talk to a non-programmer some day, you may find that they have hobbies as well, such as cooking, writing, music, and gardening. Most people have hobbies.

"Rock climbing is the new golf": I never thought about it in this way, but it makes a lot of sense. In both sports, most of the time is spent waiting/resting. This makes golf clubs and climbing gyms as much places for social contact as places where you go to train.

> Rock climbing is the new golf

Meh, you can play golf while being completely out of shape, climbing is much more demanding at least, it's much more diverse than golf and a lot of other sports too

Rock climbing isn't the new golf. There's no country club, it involves problem solving, there's nobody coming up to you to offer you drinks and snacks during the activity, you don't weight train for golf, CEOs don't take each other to a rad whipper to discuss a merger, there's no insane conspicuous wealth on display.

Tech douchebags will be tech douchebags no matter what sport they play. If you don't want to be branded a "techfuck", maybe move out of the bay area to where people don't care what you do for fun? Or stop caring if someone thinks you're a techfuck? Be yourself and let the people who don't understand you go away.

If there's something to be embarrassed about that's coincidentally associated with code and climbing (like, idk, so few scruples that were willing to work against the interests of our users) maybe we should address that head on rather than being ashamed of enjoying both code and climbing.

"Why programmers like X" = the same reason everyone else likes X.

> "Are you a rock climbing mathematician or a cat mathematician?"

Well, back in the day at our mathematics institute that had been "either smoking cigars (you could do that in the offices at that time) or doing sports" I don't know if the smokers all had cats. Of course, being in Austria "doing sports" almost universally included climbing.

Oh, and I don't have a cat but live in the mountains ;)

I'm curious where that question was asked? Because the odds of getting 3/5 is probably higher if asking a group of people in, Boulder, CO than it would be if you asked a group in Lincoln, NE.

You're right, it was CO

A similar question in math circles is which direction you eat your corn, across like a typewriter is thought to indicate algebraists, while vertically by rotating and eating in a spiral indicating analysts (analysisists?)

https://blogs.ams.org/mathgradblog/2012/12/23/howdoyoueatyou...

Typewriter algebraist. Spooky.

I left my dream job at Apple to pursue woodworking. If anyone is interested in dipping their toe in, I help out at a 2.5 day weekend workshop on the central coast of California where you come and make a piece a furniture with a master woodworker. We get a lot of software engineers from both the bay area and Seattle.

I was just looking at Esty wondering if it's time to start making some smalls to see if I could make a living off of them.

Fort Bragg? Is that the central coast? I'd love to get out there; I build furniture professionally, and my training is very much in the period American tradition, but my tastes run a lot more contemporary.

Paso Robles!

Jory Brigham?

Edit: Nevermind. Answered down thread. Lucky you. Beautiful area and Jory's work is phenomenal.

Thank you. I do feel lucky. I cold-emailed him two years ago asking if I can come sand or sweep and he invited me up. He and his family have been great and I’ve met amazing people there.

His workshops are my favorite weekends of the year, and I’m working during them, so I highly recommend it if you can swing it.

I've looked into some workshops, including his. It's not in the cards for me now, but something I'd like to do someday. I also enjoy coming back to the central coast (I went to college in SLO). Jory did some videos on his Hollister credenza for the TWW Guild. They captured (possibly unintentionally) the laid back central coast vibe with the open doors and the birds chirping in the background.

Good cabs and good craftsmanship. Paso Robles is one of California's gems.

What's the name of the workshop?

Jory Brigham Workshop

https://www.jorybrighamworkshop.com/

How do you make a living? I do woodworking at a local workspace. It seems like the margins are pretty tight unless making very high end furniture

Unfortunately not from woodworking yet, but I’m hopeful. I have some rental income, some savings, and I still do some consulting a few months out of the year.

Dining tables seem to be the best margins, but I don’t have enough work to do commissions, so I’m going out of pocket to build on spec. The good news is a lot of high end furniture is very simple. I good sense of design goes a long way.

Thanks for sharing your experience! That is similar to what I heard from others too. I wish you the best of luck with building the business!

this this right here will make a great YouTube channel.

I've thought a lot about a book or course on woodworking for software engineers. Bits to Bits was my "clever" name :)

Most people end up doing carpentry/subcontracting to make ends meet. If you make very artistic or high concept pieces and can develop a following, that's a good way to make much better margins. A bit like selling paintings.

I do baking and make confectionary, and I think it is for much the same reason that programmers also like woodworking - the fact that it is something physical that you can touch and feel (and taste, in the case of baking). Then there's the smell as well, which may be relevant for woodworking too.

I have never felt more at peace than when I took a weekend course for hand tool woodworking and spent the better part of an afternoon using hand planes to square and flatten stock in prep for the next day. The sounds and smells melted away everything else.

I appreciate baking since it's very algorithmic. It's typically a lot more precise than general cooking, and I love that about it. Just follow the steps, like my brain has been trained to do, except this time I am the runtime.

Don't talk to me about cake decorating or any of that side of things - couldn't care less and will make a mess with a piping bag.

If you are a software engineer interested in trying out woodworking, but don't want to invest in a lot of bulky and expensive machinery, I can heartily recommend balsa glider development as fun and small-scale evening hobby. I learned how to do this in pandemic lockdown, and it is a really relaxing but also intellectually demanding form of woodwork. Basically all you need to start are two large sheets of balsa wood (2mm and 10mm), a box-cutter type knife with a very sharp blade, a cutting mat, hot glue gun with glue, and a box of A3 size laminating sheets as used for laminating paper notices etc. Total cost less than GBP or USD 100, with ongoing costs being only the cost of new balsa sheets, glue sticks and spare blades for the knife. Then you need to learn a bit about aerodynamics, where the centre of gravity of a glide should be, optimal dimensions of wings to body, etc. Then you can start to design and test your own designs, starting with something easy, and graduating up to designs with 1 metre plus wingspans. Last summer I managed to get one of my designs to fly over 150 metres from the top of a 25metre hill. Best part is that if you have a hill nearby, you can spend a nice summer evening flying it until it breaks.

Can you recommend some resources for glider designs to a beginner?

Here's a couple of pages that helped me start thinking about it:

https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/regulations_policies...

http://www.ericbrasseur.org/glider_physics.html

I do metal, but it's largely the same. maybe more tool building.

the main thing that's missing here is that you _actually get to finish something_ without getting bogged down in politics and bikeshedding.

you can actually talk to your users and find out what's important to them. no one is going to show up in your shop with a 30 in 1 multitool and say 'you have to use this' instead of the plane you know is going to do the right job.

My brother works in a machine shop and they get rush orders, there’s politics with the engineers providing the plans, and the boss fights any needed tools or upgrades.

I think once you transition into a production environment both jobs lose their lustre.

That reminds me of a satire going around, about what it would be like if carpenters were hired like software engineers. (In particular, requiring an arbitrary number of years of "walnut" experience.)

I guess the difference is that woodworking stuff you can show pictures and videos of stuff you've made. While software engineering is often sensitive internal information or team work where the stuff you did is very mixed with what others did.

I would agree if I didn't have a reasonable body of work of either OSS software I have written or large OSS projects I have contributed to. The two together demonstrate I can make whatever I want from scratch and that I can work well enough with others to be part of something bigger.

The fact I still get ridiculous coding "exams" etc or pointless take-homes makes me think that most of our industry still doesn't take attracting and hiring actually good talent very seriously.

You offer "years of walnut experience" as if it's patently silly to do so, but woods vary quite a lot by many relevant characteristics, and if someone showed up for a walnut job having worked exclusively with maple, I'd be sceptical just because I've been learning the difference first-hand between the two. Walnut is brittle and open-grained and presents a different set of challenges than a forgiving close-grained wood like maple or birch.

It's like someone interviewing for a Python position saying "I've got zero Python experience but a lot of JavaScript experience, but how different can they be? They're both interpreted languages used for scripting and web dev, right?" I might not reject them out of hand, but I'm going to prefer a comparable candidate whose direct experience is with Python.

IIRC in that particular example--found an HN entry but the link is dead--the applicant affirmed that they'd worked with walnut, but couldn't put a year-number to it.

The last time I went to Woodcraft, the guy there was raving about the CNC and recommended I get one. Hard pass. Woodworking is my escape from computers. I’m sure if you do woodworking for a living a CNC is amazing, but I’ll take the slow path on this.

I actually quite enjoy the intersection of computing and woodworking that CNC provides. It's nice to be able to use my skills to make tangible things, but admittedly the CNC also intersects several hobbies I had always wanted to try: woodworking, robotics, electronics and metal machining.

There are definitely times where I just want to work with my hands in the workshop but I have plenty to do there too, so a detour to the CNC doesn't feel like it detracts from that.

To an extent, I agree, but it depends on what you're doing.

A CNC can get accuracies and scale that's hard to reproduce by hand. Also, a lot of hand tools can be very hard on your joints.

Once that slippery layer on your bones between the joints is rubbed down, it never comes back and then you have painful arthritis for the rest of your life, so anything you can do to avoid grinding your hands down, you should do.

CNCs are great if you are doing creative work like carved panels, I'd never have the skill, time, or patience to do work like that. I really love my Shapeoko

I loved using my CNC when I had one. Having one is the perfect encapsulation of a programmer: too lazy to doing anything tedious, automate everything.

I find CNC is very much like programming:

I'm too lazy to spend an hour making something by hand, but perfectly enthusiastic to spend a day getting a machine to make it.

It feels like there’s an interesting parallel to tease out between photography and woodworking for software engineers. I’m an avid and reasonably accomplished photographer, and an absolute n00b at woodworking.

I own a MILC digital camera and mostly make photographs with my iPhone these days, but greatly prefer making photographs on film with medium and large format cameras. They’re not necessarily better per se, but the physical connection I get to my work from shooting on film, and then processing and printing by hand is what really matters to me.

I think there’s a time and place for digital (I love being able to send photos and videos of my toddler to the grandparents in near real time), but I find making physical artifacts to be a much more fulfilling outcome than having another couple hundred DNGs to delete in Lightroom.

>I’m sure if you do woodworking for a living a CNC is amazing, but I’ll take the slow path on this.

Similar here. I do wood carving as a hobby. I could buy some carving tools, like chisels of various shapes and sizes, and a mallet or two, but I prefer to just use a knife - a normal kitchen knife, a Cartini, somewhat more expensive than a no-name brand, but still cheap. Of course, that means that I cannot create even moderately complex pieces, but that's okay. I am still a beginner at it, and I am fine with creating only simple stuff. I just do it for fun.

After some time, I do plan to research some carving tools, and may buy a few if I get good advice on it, and if the tools seem to make sense for me.

If you ever get to that point, by all means buy the chisels. But make the mallet(s) yourself.

Interesting, why do you say that about the mallets?

Because a mallet is a nice woodworking project, can be done at any level of sophistication, from whittling a handle to a piece of firewood to "impossible" dovetail joinery and embedded lead weights. Making your own tools gives great satisfaction, both when you make it, and later when you use it. Plus, if the first one does not feel perfect, you know you can always make a better one.

>Because a mallet is a nice woodworking project, can be done at any level of sophistication

Makes sense, thanks.

>Making your own tools gives great satisfaction, both when you make it, and later when you use it.

Ha ha, true, and in the software field too. Like many others, I sometimes make small utilities for use in my own dev work.

I find carving is a very nice escape. It’s a simple process, I mostly use one or two knives to do all the work, and then you’re done whenever you feel like you’re done.

You can’t over plan it, and as you work progress is very clear.

>I find carving is a very nice escape.

It sure is. I forget any issues or worries I have while doing it.

What kind of wood do you use for carving?

I have used pine in the past, e.g., I once carved a spoon out of it. One advantage of pine is that, having resin, it has a good scent.

Currently I am using old teak, a piece which a sawmill shop guy gave me for free, and which I was pleasantly surprise to find, was soft enough to carve with my knife. I would have thought that it would be too hard to carve, because I have heard that teak is a strong wood, but maybe that kind of strength is not the same as hardness, in terms of physical properties of materials. I need to read up on that topic.

I use basswood, I have family who use it for firewood, so I can get big already dry pieces for free and then I cut them down to workable size with a hand saw.

It's cheaper at my local lumber store than online as well.

I haven't been very adventurous with other woods because of that.

Basswood is light and easy to carve, but it doesn't finish as well as other woods.

Thanks.

I googled basswood, and found this article about it, and its parent site, the Wood Database, both of which are interesting:

https://www.wood-database.com/basswood/

I didn't know about that site either, the comment section is fantastic, it's full of users who both try different finishes and report back how it went

Cool, I will check that out. I only read the basswood entry so far.

We need more sites like these on the net, instead of the garbage piles that are much more common nowadays.

This might be the coolest site I've discovered on Hacker News in a while. Thanks for sharing!

You're welcome :)

>pleasantly surprise

surprised, typo

CNC's are good if you are making tons of templates, making furniture, or working with a lot of sheet goods. They do take a lot of fun out of the job though, as the layout and initial cuts are usually the most enjoyable and you're left just gluing and sanding finished parts.

As a timber framer, most small to medium size shops don't use one because the upfront cost is astronomical. You need a 24' bed, 5-axis head, and probably an auto-loader because the boards can weigh up to 250 lbs. If you're cranking out identical kits and shipping them nation-wide it may make sense, but it takes a long time to get to that point. Most of my work is custom one-off projects, where it would take longer to program the tool paths and load / unload pieces than to just do them by hand with specific tools. We also use green rough-sawn wood that varies in dimensions by up to 3/16", so you'd have to probe every piece somewhat thoroughly.

As Inheritance Machining showed in his most recent video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3sjsu1FPCk) it's totally possible to beat CNCs on speed alone the first time, but impossible when it comes to mass-producing. For the hobbyist woodworker doing one-off projects in their free time, I would also say it's better to enjoy the process manually.

I don't know why a lot of software devs like physical hobbies. I had always heard like on HN about people liking woodworking and plumbing, and I was like okay whatever its a meme for the site.

Then the mechanical keyboard stuff took off, and that's when I noticed really.

The people that like making the keyboards and touching the keycaps are like a separate group of people from the ones that like the layers and keyboard layouts. A lot of the youtube keyboard reviewers are not even really good at typing. And then I would see my friends soldering shit all the time like its fun. I did not try it until 2020 when a lot of stuff was shut down and I had the time. Then I was like oh soldering is just adult legos. I don't like legos at all, that's why I never liked soldering or was really into electronics kits growing up.

I feel like peoples hobbies will let you know their preferences for how much abstract thinking they like to do and how they like to process information.

Knowing this now, it makes more sense as to why they could not figure out where to put the CS department. I had come across articles before, but I never really understood what they were talking about.

65-70% are like lego people, people who like playing with legos in their spare time. The rest are humanities people who like math, linguistics, English, music etc. You have to try and figure out the type of person who you are getting information from, because people, at least in this industry, tend to think in very particular ways and it is a lot easier to tell when you start looking at their hobbies and preferences for doing things.

> I feel like peoples hobbies will let you know their preferences for how much abstract thinking they like to do

To a point, but I think it's also we do a lot of abstract thinking and want to stretch those other muscles we don't use at work.

I got into woodworking so I could renovate my house. Ended up building a workshop in my garden and furniture for our house. Can't wait to retire from SWEngineering.

Stereotypes reflect statistical reality pretty well - I did bouldering for a long time before I gave up due to fears of injuries (met so many older people there who kept doing it despite acquiring permanent injuries!).

Speaking of memes: get Japanese chisels and hand-saws, just trust me on that one, it's a meme for a good reason. A less known Japanese set of tools that is worth getting is measuring tools instead of ones made by woodpeckers - the monster cable of woodworking world. Their average measuring tools are basically the same standard as our premium brands.

I feel like woodworking is almost an exact opposite of programming. I can run the code to see if it works and it costs me nothing. In woodworking however, "let's cut that off to see how it looks" is not an option most of the time. In general, trial and error is quite limited (notably due to budget and time reasons) in woodworking while the opposite is true in programming and that fundamentally changes the way you work.

In coding the implementation is done by computers, devops, and business people, your job is pretty much like detailed planning, aka writing code.

In woodworking the plan is basically trivial compared to how hard the implementation is, and does not exactly define the finished product, because there's made-to-fit steps.

To me the planning phase of woodworking is a lot like coding.

You come up with an overall idea, then break it down into a skeleton and plan what structures you need (do I use pocket holes, or a mortise and tenon?). Once that’s done you fill in the details much like writing your functions and methods.

A lot of woodworkers build their projects in something like Sketchup before they even make the first cut, so you can basically see what the end product will look like without wasting any material.

I think woodworking is similar to programming because they both involve similar problem solving skills. You have to figure out how to build a thing to serve a use case using the tools and resources you have available.

I'm sure you can rewrite the headline to "why software engineers like x" there are a lot of software engineers and I'm sure some like woodworking and in sure a lot don't. I find it interesting, but I find a lot of things interesting. I also own a saw and some clamps, but that is about the extent of my woodworking

I've often told people that programming is like woodworking:

  - jigs are like functions
  - stops are like constants
  - experience teaches you the order of operations, how things fit together
  - woodworkers build a lot of their own tools
  - custom tools are usually made by same stuff the products are
  - both spend time optimizing their workflow
  - wood is quite soft, like software!

    jigs are like functions

Jigs (and power tools that use them) are like co-pilot! I love my hand-tools. I know inevitably it's all on the way out, but I like the hand tools more!

    experience teaches you the order of operations, how things fit together

This is how we can still "beat" co-pilot enabled juniors! You can actually understand the whole system and direct an army of juniors!

    woodworkers build a lot of their own tools

Only if you consider jigs your tool(s). I find that this is not actually the fun part of woodworking. Building a workbench from 2x4s from nothing (well, an old ikea table - or sawhorses w/ a sheet of plywood on top), glue to laminate and some 50+ year old plane from Ebay that took a week+ to de-rust and sharpen and handsaws that needed re-sharpening and de-rusting was very satisfying!

    custom tools are usually made by same stuff the products are

Yesssssir!

    both spend time optimizing their workflow

Absolutely!

    wood is quite soft, like software!

It's amazing how hard it can be to work those cheap 2x4s when you're learning. You kinda don't want to use proper hardwood (-ware) for fear of destroying (bricking) something not so cheap!

In addition to all the tangible results, the thing that draws me the most to my woodworking time is the lack of abstractions. It is me, lumber and simple application of tools to get the result I imagined. No layers of abstractions to work through - everything is right there in front of your eyes.

I did woodworking long before programming of any kind. There are some subtle but critical differences...

Mess up bad in programming, you may loose your job.

Mess up bad on the {table,band,radial arm}saw or jointer,planer,lathe and you may loose a {finger,limb,LIFE}

Cleaning up in woodworking is pretty much required, where as in software, some one typically has to yell at you to do it. If you do not clean the table saw, or dust collector, it will stop functioning. This happens a lot sooner in woodworking than the "technical debt" of software.

Personally, I prefer woodworking to software, but I think a lot of people romanticize woodworking or trade types of hobbies after doing software for a while. The truth is that it will take you a long time to be able to bang out one of those picture perfect awesome furniture items... and that piano level, three feet deep finish you see other people do... Yeah, tell me how easy that was to get. It is just like software in that respect. Good clean code takes time. Good looking woodworking takes a lot of experience.

With woodworking, you can say you are going for that country charm rustic look. Then each defect is "character". End the end you can still have a functional useful piece.

You can do a similar thing with software. Just say you're going for minimalism/a demake/suckless homage/etc.

We save on CO2 emissions through minimal effort programmer art.

If you really want some stress in the shop, teaching is hard to beat. I'm not a naturally graceful or coordinated person, but I am at least pretty aware of where my body is relative to the sharp things. It's my experience that not everyone has that.

I had a chance to teach wood shop at a high school while the usual teacher was on sabbatical. I declined because I decided I couldn’t deal with the possibility of some kid losing a finger on the table saw while in my class.

Time Ewald makes a case for "Programming with Hand Tools" in this talk he gave at Clojure/conj 2013. He too makes a connection with wood working.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShEez0JkOFw

Summary:

For most of human history, furniture was built by hand using a small set of simple tools. This approach connects you in a profoundly direct way to the work, your effort to the result. This changed with the rise of machine tools, which made production more efficient but also altered what's made and how we think about making it in in a profound way. This talk explores the effects of automation on our work, which is as relevant to software as it is to furniture, especially now that once again, with Clojure, we are building things using a small set of simple tools.

I met a guy once who had actually done programming with a hand drill.

He was working on an old mainframe that controlled a steel plant and originally this beast booted from paper tape but that had long since been worn away and replaced by a thick leather strap with holes bored in it. He had to modify the boot process so had to get a hand drill out!

I heard this around '94 from a guy in his 40s so it probably happened in the 1970s.

That is such a steampunk image right there; a vast steel behemoth, smoke and steam, an ancient computer, leather and metal. Awesome story!

I really miss programming by toggling switches on the front panel of the machine, to set bits in memory words, like they used to do in some of the earliest computers, like in the book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, by Stephen Levy ;)

I live in an apartment so I've found some things I can make inside. Currently doing sewing and machine embroidery. Making mostly kigurumis/furry related cosplay stuff/plushies and props.

It's a lot of fun and something you can do away from a computer. Though the machine embroidery does still require using a computer.

FT dev and I've been woodworking for a while. There are plenty of people singing the very real joys of woodworking, but it's not all roses.

What I've come to loathe about woodworking is the environment. Endless cleaning and running out of space and needing to find better ways to hide tools yet still be able to find them. And then something goes out of alignment and nothing seems to cut square and you ruin an expensive bit of wood.

It's all so permanent. You can't just `rm -rf node_modules`.

I'm telling myself I'll enjoy it more if I build a large insulated shop with storage, dust-collection and air filtration designed-in, but I've just been through a house reno and I'd like to just turn a few things on a lathe I've not seen in two years for all the dust.

For ancient greeks, wood was considered like we consider bits: as arbitrarily malleable stuff; eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylomorphism

Are software engineers actually driven more often to woodworking? Software engineers aren't a special class of people seeking hobby ideals.

I build guitars in my spare time. Definitely not a luthier, more a hobbyist mainly because guitar is also my main hobby.

I like the woodworking because the results are immediate. Nothing is ever the same, either. Different woods have different properties. Different batches of the same wood can be different. Lots of surprises.

No project has ever been smooth sailing from start to finish, so you always learn something new.

Making your own tools - jigs, templates, modifying tools, etc. - is a huge part of the process.

And there are so many parts to the process...in professional setting, you have workers that only work on small number of tasks, since they're experts on said tasks. But as a hobbyist, you just have to learn a bit of everything.

Though some parts can be really tedious (sanding being the worst), it is very rewarding to start seeing results. I absolutely loathe the finishing/painting process, but getting a mirror-like sheen is very rewarding, after spending all that time wet-sanding a surface.

I've completed a vocational course in Australia recently on woodworking - enough to land you an intern position at an actual shop.

Here's a few comparisons off the top (WW=WoodWorking, Soft=Software Dev/Engr):

* WW: must plan well. If you're working on a provided plank of wood, you can't "uncut" if you cut something shorter than should for example, Soft: iterative - and figure things out after some or none initial planning, and easily fix things later

* WW: higher risk of fatality/injury, Soft: relatively very low risk. Low liability for artifacts produced - but could serious affect users (e.g. cybersec).

* WW: expensive, non-scalable, Soft: scalable, non-expensive (unless u want expensive hardware)

* WW: visceral/earthy experience almost always - even on failed pieces, Soft: depends on what you produce

* WW: Tangible, Soft: Intangible

* WW: Can be repetitive - planing, jointing, routing, Soft: less repetitive

* WW: Creative, Soft: Creative

"Programming with hand tools" (Tim Ewald, Clojure Conj 2013) is a very memorable talk on this theme: https://youtu.be/ShEez0JkOFw

I built a window cornice, a four sided box covered in fabric, and actually just finished installing it a couple hours ago in my toddler's room. His room has southern and western exposure and I've been tearing my hair out trying to figure out how to make it acceptably dark in there for nap time[1].

I have essentially zero experience with woodworking, but I was drawn to it due to the practical effects of being able to solve problems I see in my home in ways that exactly fit my needs, instead of having to go with a 'good enough' off the shelf solution.

Building even something as simple as the cornice had a steep learning curve, and I think my wife probably rolled her eyes behind my back more than once when I said I had to go to Home Depot yet again for another thing I hadn't expected I'd need for it, but I'm glad I persevered.

The next thing I build will undoubtedly be easier to make, better constructed, and will continue to be the exact right thing I need to solve a problem in my home.

[1] The complete answer here is blackout curtains with curtain rods that wrap around, the window cornice, chip bag clips to get an acceptable seal in between the two curtains. It sounds straightforward, but it was a process to get there, as I kept taking half steps that proved ineffectual as the season progressed and the room kept getting more and more sunlight.

Woodworking is one of my many non-technical hobbies, used to switch off from the world. In particular, I will set out to make a 'thing' of non-critical nature, and abandon all measurement equipment. I'll still use a marking gauge without index markings, allowing me to mark a straight line, or a half way point, but that's it. Removing numbers from the process, for me, is a fantastic way to switch from an engineering mindset, to a purely creative one.

Reminds me of a traditional harpsichord builder I heard of. When starting a new instrument, he defines the "inch" for that instrument which is the width of the key. He sets his calibers for that, measures 8 inches for the width of an octave. And so on, everything is done geometrically, like they used to do in the "good old days" before this fixation of numeric methods. His instruments are of very good quality.

Can't be bothered to go and find it, but this reminded me of another title that I've seen: "why bankers like long distance running".

Some of my friends just started getting into it, but their reasons are a bit different. They're moving to new places and saw how pricey furniture can be, so they thought, "Why not make it ourselves?" Plus, it's a nice break from the usual desk job stuff. It's hands-on and feels like you're really making something useful, not just another software project , its all about getting physical.

Software Engineer and I absolutely love woodworking, I'm going to rebuild the roof on a barn this year and cover it in solar panels, I'm ridiculously excited about this project. So much so that I secretly don't really want to get back on the computer anymore. I have a feeling a lot of people feel the same and just do it for the money.

I love coding personally, but I like being outdoors or in my workshop better.

Code is a craft, woodwork is a craft. Woodwork is more logical than other crafts, and practical. You can easily spend all your time just futzing with tools without ever getting anything done, or you can churn out easy stuff that isn't interesting. Woodwork is actually a large variety of subcrafts and specialties, so many different people can find something they like about it.

> the best parts of woodworking aren't actually that different from software engineering

What parts of woodworking actually aren't that different from <your favorite profession, probably your own as of the time you are reading this>?

Which professions could I NOT relate these items to? Full honesty, looking for professions where these generics do not apply. And this is from the perspective from the actual practitioners in that profession, not outsiders looking in. I.E I don't really want a SWE thinking of using the example of a mechanic, financial advisor, nurse, land surveyor, etc.

Woodworking is an old profession turned into very niche hobby for bored people, is that not enough? What is the point to likening X to Y? I would even bet the overlap of woodworkers to the general population is equivalent if not smaller than the overlap for woodworkers to SWEs.

I agree with the above

I think we all just enjoy building things and seeing some sort of output and it doesn't really matter where you come from or your profession.

It's no surprise that one profession that builds things that people uses enjoys another profession where you build things that people use.

There are two implicit claims in TFA:

1. a larger percentage of software folk also enjoy woodworking than in the general population.

2. there is something specific and interesting about the reasons why the software folk who enjoy woodworking enjoy both

Unfortunately, we would need to do some significant social science research to determine if either of these are true, and I suspect neither of us have done so (I know I have not).

One day I'd like to get into wood carving, making little decorative figures and the like, but the lack of space + storage is currently a major roadblock for me.

There's a little part of my mind pining (heh) over getting a hobby that's more physical and scratches a technical itch, but unfortunately I don't have an adequate workspace.

You can buy a simple woodworking kit with one or two knives and some basswood blocks, which all fit inside a cookie tin.

To get into it I think I spent ~$100 CAD on knives, a block for honing, a couple books, and a big bag of wood blocks.

I personally don't really enjoy any process that produces a more or less static object. The dynamic nature of the produced artifacts is the allure of software for me, though I get the point of the parallels the author is making. Not saying you can't make dynamic art with woodworking but that is not traditional nor expected.

X is like Y since you work with tools, have to learn things, have to plan things and people have opinions about the results.

Not sure why youre downvoted. The same article can be written on why software engineers like fishing or anything else.

I would downvote because the person is being reductive, in such a way that you can destroy most joy in life.

Saying software engineering is like woodworking is overly reductive in the same way, point is that humans tend to see too many patterns and similarities even though they aren't really more similar than other things.

For those ready to take the plunge, I'd like to suggest a 'Shopsmith'.

It's a multi-purpose machine that can be a drill, lathe, table saw, sanding disk, etc. etc.

You reconfigure the machine for the task at hand, using peripheral devices. You can find them on Facebook marketplace for under a thousand dollars.

It’s true. Most of the common hobbies I know of my SWE friends in California:

- Woodworking - Diving - Restoration

I can't help thinking that this title would be improved by adding "some".

Why software engineers like woodworking - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31687378 - June 2022 (247 comments)

Tons of expensive little tools to obsess over and endlessly debate online.

i thought i could enjoy woodworking, but i was wrong.

i attended two 1-day woodworking courses: hand tools and machine tools. i made a nice bench/stool thingy that i still enjoy daily.

however, every time i work with wood, my mind immediately goes to CAD, 3d printing and wishing i had a CNC. i look at my soft baby hands (i can’t go bouldering for shit) and walk to the keyboard, create a parametric model in a notebook (build123d is great!), slice it and send it off to one of my printers…

sigh

I can somewhat be categorized at software engineer and the only thing that prevent my fingers to be cut by a table saw is that I live in an apartment.

I don't know if anyone mentionned it yet, but a big thing is that, while woodworking, you spend most of the time standing up AND moving around.

I'm not good at woodworking, but with fusion360 designing stuff + 3D printing them, aaawwwyeahh! (yes, i am a programmer)

Subtractive work gives me job paralysis. Malleable materials are great though.

I cannot do "work" without Ctrl-Z and/or git reset --hard

pretty much. And as far as woodworking goes, you can’t undo cuts.

I’d also recommend trying ceramics too! It scratches a similar itch

After reading this thread for the second (only some of it each time), I was just about to comment: "I wonder how many software engineers like pottery and other such hand crafts", but then I saw your comment above :)

Yes! Having done both I like how short the feedback loop is for ceramics, and how much oppourtunity there is for optimisation!

Earthmoving works too.

Software engineering is my woodworking

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