81–90 of 125 posts
People would probably die if I was an actual engineer, so I'm deeply appreciative that I can enjoy infrastructure and whatnot without having to worry about it crumbling above/beneath me.
Hats off to just... non-engineers in general. Some of the most important people in society like nurses, teachers, and drivers get paid absolutely terribly and are being forced to fight tooth and nail just to get a pay rise that matches inflation. We tap keys on a keyboard and drink coffee in air conditioned offices (or at home) and get paid stupid amounts.
The scientists solving harder problems.
So many people should be appreciated
Everything was built on the shoulders of giants
I always wondered why we say "giants" here. It would be more accurate and empowering to say "everything was built on the shoulders of our ancestors" they weren't giants. They were regular people.
The reason he said ‘giants’ is supposedly that it was a dig at Robert Hooke, who was famously short. Impressively, if true then he both managed to get this dig in and to be remembered for his humility as a result of it.
Let's pay respect in ways other than money too. Money isn't everything and the goal isn't to have everybody ranked by income as a proxy for how useful or how much "worth" they are.
But I'd also like to be able to afford to not share a bedroom with my kids. That costs a lot these days.
Over the past few years, I've been taking driving very seriously in terms of skill development and practice. One ritual I've started doing is thanking my car after every drive. For the privilege I'm afforded by being able to drive freely unlike most of the world. For the car itself for holding up so reliably. And for the hundred+ years of engineering man hours and passion given to get where we are today. In any popul…
I am not sure that's the case. Especially knowing the car injury stats and secondary effects of different kinds of pollution.
Why compare those of us who write software with engineers? It makes more sense to compare us to say.. composers, poets or something. Writing software is an art form and has nothing in common with engineering other than some uncreative types trying to come up with a more official sounding name.
MechE here. I argue that what I do, designing medical devices, is exactly the same. More an art than a science, and more similar to software engineering than any of those other things you list.
Yeah, most of them have, in my country, called Licensed for Professional Practice while software engineers don't. If developers were to stay comply with standard quality, we would get license cancelled very fast. For example, look at how frontends don't like to talk about engineering metrics like memory / size / perf etc, it's as if this is literally a fashion industry.
Don’t mistake gatekeeping with desirable outcomes.
Software can market itself through its aesthetic and cultural appeal, thus attracting disproportionate interest from managers and investors. A new project can produce a beautiful demo with no underlying functionality.
I'm not sure there's a clear rational relationship between the cost of software development and the value it produces. I've read The Mythical Man Month.
One problem with traditional engineering is that we don't have the tools to make ourselves maximally efficient, such as JIRA and Scrum. The reality of getting things physically made and tested adds some slack to our work flow. Personally I prefer that, coming from the "hardware" side. My friends who are programmers at my age work a lot harder than I do, and many are burnt out. I have the luxury of using programming as a tool without anybody managing how I do it.
Any creation for positive impact on the world, whether engineering or humanities should be applauded and paid well. Unfortunately that rarely happens.