from Hacker News

Da Vinci – Overrated?

by bze12 on 6/7/20, 12:05 PM with 36 comments

  • by keiferski on 6/7/20, 1:02 PM

    This reads almost as a parody of tech entrepreneurship and the modern age. Steve Jobs is more praiseworthy than da Vinci, because he "shipped" products for the consumer market, as compared to da Vinci, who was more interested in artistic and scientific knowledge for its own sake? Is this legitimately what the author thinks?

    The post is also wrong/misinformed on a number of things. Da Vinci did intend to build a number of his plans, but was thwarted by the fact that he lived in conflict-ridden Renaissance Italy. For example, his design for a gigantic bronze horse never became a reality as his patron used the bronze for making cannons.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo%27s_horse

  • by jonnypotty on 6/7/20, 1:22 PM

    Comparing Steve Jobs to Da Vinci? There is no appropriate comparison here. You think Da Vinci should have 'shipped more'? So often people think they can pick and choose characteristics, why can't you be more like this, or that, or sure Micheal Jordan was good, but he would have been better if he was nice. It's the naive, arrogant picking apart of things that we just don't understand and it stunts our understanding of things. Try and learn from great artists maybe rather than believing we have some insight into how they could have been 'better', more 'productive'. I'm completely baffled at the idea that Da Vinci didn't contribute as much as he should or could have.

  • by nend on 6/7/20, 1:06 PM

    He left a lot of inventions in the design phase, but the truth is da Vinci shipped more than most of us ever will.

    Some of his inventions couldn't be built during his time either, so it wasn't simply that he always lost interest. Seems a bit unfair to mention design flaws but not point out that he was designing machines that required materials that didn't exist yet.

  • by the_af on 6/7/20, 1:30 PM

    It reads like a parody to be honest. I'm hoping it is one.

    Of particular interest is the author's equivocation of Jobs' Reality Distortion Field. The author makes it seem as if it was Jobs' ability to distort the world to create something unexpected, but most of us use the term to describe how Jobs could make people believe all sorts of dumb things while in his presence (and the effect wore off when not in his presence, when people realized these things were indeed dumb). It's not a positive thing.

  • by r32a_ on 6/7/20, 1:01 PM

    Leonardo did "ship" some of the greatest works of art. Some of those paintings took decades to complete. Which you happily glanced over.

    Comparing steve jobs to Leonardo is a discredit to both steve jobs and leonardo.

  • by rramadass on 6/7/20, 1:46 PM

    A most sacrilegious article by a clueless author :-) This silliness where people just parrot platitudes like "execution", "implementation" without really understanding what it means is the bane of all Creativity.

    The mark of a Genius is an insatiable curiosity about a wide variety of subjects and the willingness to jump into every one of them without regard to other people's expectations. Da vinci was unparalleled in that respect. The breadth of his interests is what makes him so great. Execution is always limited by circumstances like political climate, patrons, resources etc. Given the uncertain times that Da vinci lived through, it is an absolute miracle that he was able to do as much as he did. To dismiss it all by using platitudes like "Real artists/engineers" ship" is the height of ignorance and hubris.

    Further reading:

    * The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Vols I & II (Dover publications)

    * Leonardo on the Human Body (Dover publications)

    * Leonardo, The Complete Paintings and Drawings by Frank Zollner (Taschen Publications). This is a huge book but worth every penny. I believe it was later republished in multiple volumes due to its size.

  • by KKPMW on 6/7/20, 1:56 PM

    I read the post and appreciate the perspective but disagree so strongly with this that cannot pass without leaving a comment.

    Claiming da Vinci is overrated to Jobs because Jobs shipped more is on the same bar as saying Beethoven is overrated because his music is not suitable for a disco club and is less profitable.

  • by lqet on 6/7/20, 1:43 PM

    I am regularly seeing Steve Jobs described as a genius both in posts and comments on HN. I am always genuinely wondering: what is this based on? From my perspective, Jobs had an amazing talent for motivating people, and for selling both himself and his product in a cult-like way. But a genius?

    > Leonardo had no trouble distorting reality either, the only difference is that Jobs could actually make these ideas happen.

    What ideas exactly? Selling computers Steve Wozniak designed? Releasing an MP3 player that looked better than previous ones? Removing smartphone keyboards?

  • by danfritz on 6/7/20, 1:26 PM

    What I always learned about Da Vinci was that he was a pacifist. He was employed as a "military engineer" but he saw himself more as a scientist [1]. It's also debatable if those "errors" were left on purpose to prevent his work for being copied or it where real errors.

    [1] https://theconversation.com/four-ways-in-which-leonardo-da-v...

  • by dariot on 6/7/20, 1:34 PM

    I agree with others who disagree with the post. It's true that both Leonardo and Jobs were visionaries and it's true that Leonardo lost interest quickly (I guess that's because he was curious about so many different things) but there's a very big difference between the two: Leonardo was inventing, designing and eventually building his own things, Steve Jobs had hundreds of highly talented engineers for that.

  • by jedimastert on 6/7/20, 1:13 PM

    I think this might be a misunderstanding of who both of these people were.

    Steve Jobs was an engineer. He saw 10 years into the future and made it happen.

    I prefer to think of Da Vinci as a proto sci-fi artist. It'd be like calling Jules Verne a hack for not actually making his time machine...

  • by mark_l_watson on 6/7/20, 1:13 PM

    I so strongly disagree.

    Years ago, alone of my consulting customers sent me a 40 pound giant book of Da Vinci’s notes, art, inventions, etc. Amazing corpus of intellectual curiosity and exploration, not to mention all the great art.

  • by butterfi on 6/7/20, 1:17 PM

    I think the idea of "shipping" in this context is misplaced. "Shipping", as used colloquially, means to send a product to market, which is not the point of art. Artists create. Businesses ship.

  • by deep-root on 6/7/20, 1:23 PM

    I regretfully clicked on this click bait... Are non-advertising interstitials on mobile becoming a thing? It feel unnatural to have the page loaded but locked for a few seconds.

  • by P-NP on 6/7/20, 1:51 PM

    Many don't believe that the rather unimpressive 'Salvator Mundi' was painted by Leonardo. Nevertheless, it sold for 450 million bucks. His most famous paintings such as the Mona Lisa might bring hundreds of billions if they were on the market. Probably more than what Steve Jobs ever owned. So much for 'shipping products to the consumer market.'

  • by trentnix on 6/7/20, 1:40 PM

    As an artist and idea generator, he is virtually peerless. As a product creator and businessman, his performance isn't impressive.

    Is he overrated? It depends on what you value and how you're keeping score.

  • by mack1001 on 6/7/20, 2:56 PM

    I think OPs goal was to evoke reaction to his post On HN and looks like he was pretty successful at that.

  • by layoutIfNeeded on 6/7/20, 1:48 PM

    If this is not peak tech bubble, then I don't know what it is.

  • by the-dude on 6/7/20, 2:00 PM