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Comment by Temporary_31337 | Hacker News Reader

I feel like I’m the right audience for this - a not very good climber with unusual distribution of limbs. But I’m not interested - part of the fun in climbing is on sight climbs and solving problems yourself.

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Man, where is the hacking spirit? OP posts a very cool, impressive hack and all everyone can talk about in the comments is how it actually isn't interesting to them.

It's great if someone wants to use the "hacking spirit" to help themself climb, it doesn't obligate everyone else to want to use the same technique; and frankly it's (slightly) more interesting hearing people say why they would or wouldn't use it than to have a bunch of comments just saying "awesome that you're doing this" and ignoring whether they'd find it interesting themselves or not.

I would say (opinion) that it’s vastly more interesting to hear whether other people would use Thing I Built. I can nerd snipe myself all day on projects. By that I mean I can easily endlessly entertain myself building things, both useless and useful. Whether they are interesting AND useful for other people is quite a large driver for me both for personal and business projects

If somebody solves the 'hacking' part for you, a lot of fun disappears. Yes they probably had tons of fun, but you lose some of it.

Figuring a route for the first time is by far the most rewarding part of climbing (although I love all of it). Same with kids - if they grok something on their own, what a reaction and reward compared to being told how to do it.

It's cool as an academic exercise, but there are things in life where the struggle is kind of the point. The messy learning process, asking other humans for help, is better for your growth.

In 2024, the "hacking spirit" aligns well with not using an app to do everything.

If you ever Moonboard, you'll see the app gives easy access to beta videos from Instagram. That's because many people want help on really hard problems. OP app is like those videos.

If you never feel like you need help from watching someone else climb, then I think you are not trying hard enough problems.

As an experienced, very poor climber myself, I enjoy the process of problem solving. However, knowing many experienced, very good climbers - studying beta is how many of them excel. As an aside, the term beta also came from the use of beta tapes by climbers to record themselves climbing so they could study the minutiae of their movement to find improvements. In higher levels of bouldering especially, a nuanced and firm understanding of beta is everything - so careful analysis of your movement can help identify areas of improvement.

I believe this is consistent with most elite (or elite-aspiring) athletes from many sports.

While I personally enjoy the problem-solving aspect of climbing (when I rarely do get out), I absolutely see the value in this project (and other climbing apps that thrive on beta sharing)

To clarify and define the time period: beta as in Beta Max video cassette tapes.

Came here hoping to see something like this. Glad to see it’s the top comment. Part of the beauty of climbing is solving a puzzle and figuring things out.

Edit: Unsurprised to see the demo on a gym route instead of actual rock.

Will post more videos on outdoor rocks soon! I just chose that video for the demo because it was easy to explain the route

gym route is also important and heavily used

Thank you for posting this. :-)

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