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Taste is disciplined reduction
Why most attempts at taste produce things that are merely styled.
Taste in software is often spoken about as if it were a kind of decoration — a final coat of polish applied to something already built. That framing is wrong, and it is the reason most attempts at “taste” produce things that are merely styled.
Taste is not addition. It is the ongoing practice of removing what does not belong. It is the willingness to look at a thing you have made and ask, of every element, whether it is earning its place.
This is harder than it sounds. Most of what we add to software is added because it was easy to add, or because someone else added something similar, or because removing it would feel like loss. Taste is the discipline of treating those reasons as insufficient.