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Comment by guhcampos | Hacker News Reader

I follow him and coincidentally (or not, maybe there's some correlation with this coming back to HN?) he posted a video last week with sort of an epiphany.

According to him, he realized he's been trying to engineer a functionally perfect machine this whole time, and that's pointless, because it's never been about the machine function, but about the artistic expression of creating such machine.

From this, he derived that instead of optimizing the machine for function, he'll begin optimizing for fun, looks and generally the "cool" of the machine. I'm excited to see what's going to happen from now on.

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I'm happy to hear he is finally realizing the error of his previous decision, but this should not be an epiphany. So many of us that followed the project told him exactly that when he decided to throw out the MMX and start over. I still worry that he hasn't learned the lesson that "perfection is the enemy of good" and will use yet another change of direction/method to avoid actually finishing something.

I've lost count of the number of "epiphanies" he's had.

> he posted a video last week with sort of an epiphany

He does this every year or so. He always has some big takeaway – engineering for fun, getting back to enjoying his work, getting anything finished so he can go on tour which he enjoys...

I followed the channel for a few years because I wanted to see a machine come together, but I realised over time that the machine is not the point. It's a self-help channel, it's about productivity, burnout, and the process of engineering and design.

If that's what you want, great. But I get enough pontificating about engineering process in my job, and I was there for the machine, so I gave up. If he ever goes on tour I'll be there, but I'm not holding my breath.

The best time period was when the entire YouTube maker community was building parts for it and making their own videos for the process - felt like something really special.

Yeah this was good, which then made it even more sad when each part got cast aside as having been the wrong solution in some way. I'm sad to think of all the effort that went into the project from others. It seemed like a team came in to support him at one point, but then he dropped off YouTube in favour of live streaming (at inappropriate times for many), only to return later, without the team.

That was when ToT made some part, right?

I remember him saying something similar like a year ago or more.

I like his pursuits. I would personally rather he make more music though

Funny that he’s only realising this now when he’s had comments telling him for years pretty much exactly this.

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