eisenworks

There is a distinction between how I or someone else values a piece and any kind of objective truth of the valuation. I might feel great about how tightly a hand-cut dovetail fits, knowing the skill and experience required to achieve that result. I might also judge that of two dovetails that achieve the same degree of perfection, the joint that produced the result with the least time and effort is smarter for wasting less of my time. No one can tell me that either of these judgments is wrong. I value the scenery more when I take one route home from work, but I value another route because it takes less time and gas. Both are legitimate values.

This argument -- that easier is cheating -- reminds me of people who think that reading a book on a Kindle is an inferior experience to leafing through a bound copy of a book with precisely the same content. For me, I value the fact that I can have 3,000 books in a package smaller than a typical book, and that I can use the wall real estate in my house for fine art, instead of book cases -- even though I love to build book cases.

Enjoy what you enjoy. Value what you value. You have no right to make judgments about other people whose values are different. It's no skin off of your back.