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There are perfectly fine explanations to most people, actually, and anyone who disagrees greatly underestimates the ability of the common person to understand analogies. People in tech-focused communities tend to treat every common person like they're caricatures of the absentminded father or clueless wife in a 1980s cartoon.

"See, it's like you made a pizza with cake flour. It won't taste good, it won't cook quite right, and you'll be disappointed even though it kind of works. There's nothing bad about cake flour, and it works really well for what it's intended for, but it can't be used for everything."

"Imagine you were using bad steel when you were forging a blade. It'll crack, roll or worse, but it'll still look vaguely knife-like."

"It's like you're wanting to play electric rock music but you're missing a few strings and you don't have a pickup so it's really pretty much just a weirdly-shaped banjo."




i'm technical and i still get confused and hate how there is no standard markings/anything to indicate what does what


Those are some descriptions of things, but how do they work as analogies? They don't explain anything.


The analogies are direct. They all describe processes that fail with similar substitutes that yield similar results.


"Thing does not Fulfill Requirements so you don't get Desired Outcome."

This is a pattern that literally every human understands in their own niche.

"The Pizza was made with Cake Flour so it's Low-Quality."

"The Blade was made with Low-Carbon Steel so it's Unsafe and Weak."

"The Cable was made Without the Proper Materials so It's Subpar.


That's not the problem the average person is trying to solve though, they want to know how they're supposed to tell the different kinds of flour apart.


Still pretty simple:

"Just like with flour, keep them in their own containers, and keep track of which container is which. If you lose track, bake something small as a test or test the cable by plugging it in."


I much prefer the other solution we have for flour. Having them labeled. Literally just need colored bands on the cable like a resister.


They tried that for USB 3.0: blue plastic instead of black. (though that was also a bit of a disaster)


Cake flour makes yummy pizza dough though.


Only if you're doing thin crust and don't mind a crunch; cake flour in pizza leaves the crust unchewy, which is a big downside if you wanted pizza like most people want pizza. Except people who live in Detroit, who are very happy with their hard cake pizza dough.

Now, you can use both types of flour and get a cool result but cake flour on its own will leave you with a rock with tomato sauce and cheese, most of the time.




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