Cited on HN 3 times, 2018–2023, never outright recommendedscore 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Used as a reference when discussing inverted-steering analogies and how hard it is to rewire a learned skill.
Mike Boyd takes up Smarter Every Day's challenge to learn to ride the Backwards Brain Bike, a bicycle whose steering is inverted, and rides 50 meters. It shows how hard it is to unlearn a motor skill.
“this guy took a more serious attempt at learning to ride the backwards” (HN, 2018)
I had never really considered RTL design until I decided on a whim to support Arabic in an app [1], and before doing so I would have easily laughed at this. After doing so, I can completely understand it. It seems so simple—text just goes from right to left instead of left to right, but truly grokking that seems impossible for me. It's like riding a bike with the handlebars backwards [2]—it just doesn't work in your brain, as much as your higher-level thoughts seem to understand it. I was lucky that Flutter did almost all of the heavy lifting for me, but I spent more time than I'd like to admit ironing things out and I still don't think it's quite right. [1] [link] [2] [this video]
This reminds me of the 'poisoned' clown bike, which has a geared stem that inverts steering, move bars in an arc to the right = bike goes left. [this video]
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