31–40 of 64 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Napster was written by a 19yrs old. Bram wrote bittorent when he was 26yrs old. Justin Frankel was 22yrs old when he wrote gnutella with Tom who was 25yrs old. I mention these systems, because these were apps that needed to operate at scale.
Yes, yet I wonder how good they would stand if someone did a proper Software Engineer review of their architecture and code quality.
As a software "engineer", I've always been envious of architects and the well-defined path to mastery that exists in their field. You start off as a lowly apprentice and only through years of study and practice can you progress. As a result, the best architects in the world are generally forty and above and there is a correlation between age and competence. There is no 22 year old rockstar architect. The bar of compe…
I found it interesting wandering around the ancient sites in Egypt to see what survived 4000 years. Granite was the easy winner followed by heaped structures of softer rocks.
The problem with that for architecture is most structures are meant to be occupied, and being inside a heaped structure of softer rocks isn't very nice. I do wish that I got to see a structure meant to last millennia built in my lifetime. On that timescale, I _just_ missed Mount Rushmore.
I found it interesting wandering around the ancient sites in Egypt to see what survived 4000 years. Granite was the easy winner followed by heaped structures of softer rocks.
The problem with that for architecture is most structures are meant to be occupied, and being inside a heaped structure of softer rocks isn't very nice. I do wish that I got to see a structure meant to last millennia built in my lifetime. On that timescale, I _just_ missed Mount Rushmore.
If so, I think plenty of buildings will survive. If not, it’s a strangely specific definition to me, since still standing but un-maintained and unused isn’t a goal I would shoot for.
As a software "engineer", I've always been envious of architects and the well-defined path to mastery that exists in their field. You start off as a lowly apprentice and only through years of study and practice can you progress. As a result, the best architects in the world are generally forty and above and there is a correlation between age and competence. There is no 22 year old rockstar architect. The bar of compe…
Uncle got a Bachelor's in Architecture, and was able to draft plans, but wasn't able to give them actual approval. You need a Master's degree and a certification through the state government, and often the Master's degree is done as part of your employment at a larger firm. And you need another Master-Architect to sponsor your master's, so the larger architecture firms sponsor apprentices-- but they do so with a pretty significant pay-cut to working apprentices.
My uncle is a bit of a scoundrel, looked at that system, and was like "screw that", and solely did drafting. Sure he couldn't finalize plans, but he specialized in doing drafts quickly. (He's admitted that his drafts were probably lower-quality and smudgier than other's, but they were done _far_ faster and cheaper.) He did this for a few years, and from all the drafts he's learn a fair amount.
So after 5 years of working as a freelance drafter, a young guy who has a newly minted Master-Architect cert reaches out to my uncle and asks if he's hiring. My uncle thinks about it and says--- yeah, actually, I am. With a master-architect on staff he can submit actual plans to cities. In addition my uncle asks the young master-architect to sponsor my uncle in a master's certification. The way that my uncle talks about it, it was almost a sham of a "sponsorship"-- especially since my uncle was both more experienced than and the employer of his sponsor.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Napster was written by a 19yrs old. Bram wrote bittorent when he was 26yrs old. Justin Frankel was 22yrs old when he wrote gnutella with Tom who was 25yrs old. I mention these systems, because these were apps that needed to operate at scale.
As other people stated: they build standing from the shoulder of the giants. And even if they had started from zero, these guys are the exception, not the norm. We can find 20 year-old geniuses in every camp.
As a software "engineer", I've always been envious of architects and the well-defined path to mastery that exists in their field. You start off as a lowly apprentice and only through years of study and practice can you progress. As a result, the best architects in the world are generally forty and above and there is a correlation between age and competence. There is no 22 year old rockstar architect. The bar of compe…
To be fair, the most well known examples of architecture tend to cost a lot of money to construct, and people spending lots of money want someone with experience. If you look at painters for example, a lot of them produce great work at relatively younger ages than architects, probably because the barriers to entry are lower. Still, it seems that in the arts, you can continue to produce great work for a long time. For…
As a teenager in rural Wisconsin, Frank Lloyd Wright worked for a graduate of MIT school of architecture and then went to Madison to work for a civil engineering professor at UW Madison. His big break was to run away from home and go to Chicago, which was in the midst of the largest building boom in the history of the world up to then, where he was hired within a day of arriving by the firm owned by the MIT grad he worked for years before.
The guy started very early and then never stopped working.
As a software "engineer", I've always been envious of architects and the well-defined path to mastery that exists in their field. You start off as a lowly apprentice and only through years of study and practice can you progress. As a result, the best architects in the world are generally forty and above and there is a correlation between age and competence. There is no 22 year old rockstar architect. The bar of compe…
I'm a software engineer that went through architecture school and I think you're glorifying architects a bit here. The only reason why architects have a more gradual path as you describe is because there is a LOT of gatekeeping and feedback on your work is a LOT slower. To become an architect you have to ideally go through schooling at a specific set of schools and then after that you have years of internships where…
In software, you make a typo and you get an error immediately. You fix it and go on.
In architecture, you make a typo and you hear about it 6 months later, and it's a $200,000 change order (exaggerating...somewhat).
As a software "engineer", I've always been envious of architects and the well-defined path to mastery that exists in their field. You start off as a lowly apprentice and only through years of study and practice can you progress. As a result, the best architects in the world are generally forty and above and there is a correlation between age and competence. There is no 22 year old rockstar architect. The bar of compe…