Taste-skill gaps

When I saw Craig Mod speak in San Francisco this summer, he mentioned an concept that stuck with me. I don’t remember his exact context, only that he was new to something and knew his work wasn’t good yet, but didn’t know how to improve it - which he explained as a "taste-skill gap".

I’ve since used that framework as a lens for work and life.

I usually mean it as “taste exceeds skill.” A backend developer sees a page looks off, tries to fix it, and makes it worse. That’s a taste–skill gap. Closing it takes practice and feedback[1].

The inverse happens, too: skill exceeds taste. With AI, a novice can ship a feature exactly as imagined, yet the choice may be in poor taste - for example, a blinking homepage banner.

When work misses expectations, I ask: is this a skill gap or a taste gap? Skills respond to repetition and feedback. Taste improves by studying good work.

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1. IRL RLHF ↩︎