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Can You Get Smarter?

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Re: Can You Get Smarter?

#91

Post by mikestew »

lsc wrote: post #64
agumonkey wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there websites to discuss and teach mechanic repair informally like SO ? I mean with a few tutorials I could probably fix a lot of things in cars by imitating the video. One big difference though, initial cost. I can't download a wrench yet, and most auto equipment is costly.

so I don't know about on the professional level, but on the amateur level... just about anything you might want to do to your own car? you can find a youtube tutorial. Last time some asshole busted out my window to steal my laptop, I replaced it myself; took maybe an hour and a half and a $60 window from ebay. And a youtube tutorial. Same with replacing brakes/rotors, though those took considerably more time and effo…

[1]for auto tools, I really don't see much difference between the craftsman level brands and the better brands.

The difference is that you don't use the same wrench a dozen times a day, day in and day out. Same reason my home toolboxes don't have roller bearing drawers: I don't open the drawers a dozen times a day anymore, so it's a waste of money for me now.

As I said above, Craftsman is fine for the DIYer. It's the brand I frequently buy. I haven't talked to a Snap-On driver since I left the field.

Re: Can You Get Smarter?

#92

Post by mikestew »

moonchrome wrote: post #61
mikestew wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once-upon-a-time-time auto mechanic, long time software dev here. It's not just the owner making a living, when I was active it was a decent middle-class living (25 years ago, could be different now). I'm talking professional, can diagnose your problem without throwing parts at it, owns a torque wrench and knows how to use it, not the vocational school students you find at Jiffy Lube. No one I knew was making BMW pay…

>You're not going to be doing any copy-pasta from StackOverflow when you're an auto mechanic. That's an interesting comparison - why couldn't you use StackOverflow for mechanics. I don't know anything about cars other than they have generally have 4 wheels and use fuel but from the hardware work I've done on computers whenever I was troubleshooting stuff I would first look for symptoms then I would search and find ra…

why couldn't you use StackOverflow for mechanics.

Well, sonny, back then we had no easily-accessed Internet. :-) But there are sites much like SO, just not under one umbrella. For instance, for our BMW motorcycles, there are several web forums I can troll for answers. Our Scion xB has at least one or two sites where one can get help for mechanical questions. And, hell, there probably is an auto-related Stack Exchange site for all I know (a quick glance shows a bicycle-related one, so there's got to be one for cars.)

For pros, it's not really a question of "how do I change a headlight?" Any pro knows the basics involved that would apply to just about any car. The real question is usually "how the hell do I get to the screw holding that bracket?" or "I've got all of the visible fasteners out, and it still won't budge". For that, there used to be big bookshelves of shop manuals that are now replaced with DVDs.

Re: Can You Get Smarter?

#93

Post by lsc »

mikestew wrote: post #91
lsc wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so I don't know about on the professional level, but on the amateur level... just about anything you might want to do to your own car? you can find a youtube tutorial. Last time some asshole busted out my window to steal my laptop, I replaced it myself; took maybe an hour and a half and a $60 window from ebay. And a youtube tutorial. Same with replacing brakes/rotors, though those took considerably more time and effo…

[1]for auto tools, I really don't see much difference between the craftsman level brands and the better brands. The difference is that you don't use the same wrench a dozen times a day, day in and day out. Same reason my home toolboxes don't have roller bearing drawers: I don't open the drawers a dozen times a day anymore, so it's a waste of money for me now. As I said above, Craftsman is fine for the DIYer. It's the…

>The difference is that you don't use the same wrench a dozen times a day, day in and day out.

yeah, that's kind of what I was trying to say with the bit about how I care very much about the tools for dealing with rackmount computers and how I have a favorite screwdriver. I didn't care about screwdrivers either until I started using them a lot. I would bet money that you are right and that if I worked on cars more, I would care more about getting a really nice set of automotive tools, but I don't work on cars that much, so I don't really understand how the really good tools are different from the merely "good enough" tools, because that comes with experience.

But my main point was that there are tools that are adequate for the shadetree mechanic that are cheap enough to more than pay for themselves after a single use in a shadetree level project. If you can afford to have your car fixed, you have the capital to buy adequate (maybe not really nice... but adequate) tools to get started with your automotive hobby or the beginning of your education as a mechanic.

I do imagine that like IT people, most, or at least a whole lot of mechanics start out as hobbyists. The two seem similar enough to me.

Re: Can You Get Smarter?

#94

Post by chdir »

moonchrome wrote: post #58
chdir wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> learning to code when he was 63 > switching careers extended his neural plasticity considerably I find this very interesting & uplifting. Would you be comfortable sharing more on what motivated him to switch careers at that age and your general observations throughout the process. I'm perhaps your age but I've experienced switching careers significantly is like hitting F5 in your life, or like a complete system re-…

>is like hitting F5 in your life It starts your career in debug mode ?

F5 = refresh (browser)

Re: Can You Get Smarter?

#95

Post by black_knight »

wiremine wrote: post #83
pen2l wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what. Am I correct getting this impression that what's being said is that auto mechanic work is somehow not "brain work"? Because for solving a lot of car problems it takes brains. If you're good at troubleshooting car problems, you will actually probably be good at programming.

It's definitely brain work, but it is concrete, physical 3D space kind of thinking. Programming, and especially software architecture, tends to be more abstract thinking. FWIW, the Kolbe test methodology [1] has a good way of quantifying this sort of natural aptitude. 90% of programmers I know who have taken the test [2] are very good at abstract thinking, and not as good at the physical kind. [1] kolbe.com [2] Maybe…

Someone needs to read «Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance»

Re: Can You Get Smarter?

#96

Post by meric »

WildUtah wrote: post #87
tracker1 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think gp was refering to doctors being the white-collar of the three... and even with engineers they are not blue collar, mot legally at least... Exempt from overtime pay (salaried), no time and a half for OT hourly, etc. IT work is definitely white collar legally speaking.. even if considered at blue-collar by management types.

The responsibilities of a white collar job, the wages and respect of a blue collar job, and the number one target of mass skilled immigration to drive down wages. That's what you get when our profession is distinctive for the lack of social skills and interest in organizing to protect our own interests. The country is not getting more friendly to people who know how to do things but don't know how to win favor with t…

You can work for $100 an hour from Cairo or Sichuan as a software engineer on upwork.com if you know what you're doing. I don't really think we have any need to defend anything.

Re: Can You Get Smarter?

#97

Post by kator »

chdir wrote: post #46
kator wrote: post #13

My dad went from being an auto mechanic to learning to code when he was 63 and he's 77 now and argues with me about Drupal vs Joomla over dinner. It's only one sample but I'm convinced him switching careers extended his neural plasticity considerably.

> learning to code when he was 63 > switching careers extended his neural plasticity considerably I find this very interesting & uplifting. Would you be comfortable sharing more on what motivated him to switch careers at that age and your general observations throughout the process. I'm perhaps your age but I've experienced switching careers significantly is like hitting F5 in your life, or like a complete system re-…

Well I started in computers when I was 15. My dad was very worried and upset when I quit my first job flipping hamburgers at Wendy's and started programming full time.

Over the years he grew tired of his job, he went into management and that was just worse. He said he missed the problem solving of the day to day mechanic job. My mom had went back to school at 40 to get a degree in art and was having a lot of fun with computer graphics and over the years my Dad would tease her about paying the bills.

One particularly hard day my Dad handed his keys to his boss and walked out of the shop, never to look back. He ran into a project to help his church with their headquarters website and he said "It can't be any harder than working on a 318". And off they went, from that one to the next, now my mom makes eReader magazines and my dad sits and bashes away at sites and debugs problems.

One time he tried to tell me how smart I was and I laughed, I told him I've watched him tear a car down to the studs and find one broken part and put it back together from memory. Never looking at a manual, reading diagrams or even pausing to guess where one of a thousand parts went. He's brilliant, he taught me to break problems down to single variables, test and iterate. Clearly he's way smarter than I am, I'm just trying to mimic him. :-)

Re: Can You Get Smarter?

#98

Post by kator »

goodJobWalrus wrote: post #54
chdir wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> learning to code when he was 63 > switching careers extended his neural plasticity considerably I find this very interesting & uplifting. Would you be comfortable sharing more on what motivated him to switch careers at that age and your general observations throughout the process. I'm perhaps your age but I've experienced switching careers significantly is like hitting F5 in your life, or like a complete system re-…

"Switching careers" also implies that he found a job as a programmer. I imagine it's really difficult to convince someone to employ someone who is 60+ and just learned to code.

He is self-employed, all he had to do was hire himself. :-)

I've spent the bulk of my life self-employed and he realized it wasn't as scary as it looks from the outside.

Re: Can You Get Smarter?

#99

Post by JoeAltmaier »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #41
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but would they have recognized it? Would they put 2 and 2 together - "I ate a hamburger every Tuesday night for a year, and now I'm smarter...Eureka!" Heck, maybe they would - they're a genius now.

Of course they would, that's how we've invented pretty much anything, scientific method included. People are pretty observant, there are lots of them and they've been taking notes for many thousands of years.

Um, I meant the random chance part. If something happens randomly, folks are rarely watching, right?

Re: Can You Get Smarter?

#100

Post by quickpost »

kator wrote: post #13

My dad went from being an auto mechanic to learning to code when he was 63 and he's 77 now and argues with me about Drupal vs Joomla over dinner. It's only one sample but I'm convinced him switching careers extended his neural plasticity considerably.

That's awesome. I hope I'm still learning new things when I'm 63 or 77!
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