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Agruably, there's a significant difference between: 1: Collecting parts, soldering them together, programming and tuning a device, learning about how it all wo

Agruably, there's a significant difference between: 1: Collecting parts, soldering them together, programming and tuning a device, learning about how it all works, failing sometimes, then being able to fly 100'+ in the air and 2: Buying a pre-built quad and skimming the FAA regulations. Unbox it and walk outside. Crank the throttle all the way to max and stare with glee as GPS keeps it at 10,000 feet right over your house.

mentat 11y ago
This ends up sounding like "kids these days". Did you build your own computer? From the gates up? Oh, well then you're not a real engineer... It's usually an ego based distinction too.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Maybe, but it's hard to argue there isn't something to it. I think for each technology you can distinguish three types of users. 1) Those who care about it for itself - in this case the ones assembling their own drones, or willing to at least understand them on a deep level. 2) Those who treat it as just a tool, means to an end - think people doing air photos for money with drones. And 3), tourists - those who don't know a thing about the tech, don't want to know about it, but come drooling because it's cool and shiny. Usually the third group does stupid shit (as in stupid stupid, not smart stupid), the first one gets angry at "kids these days", and the second doesn't care as long as it doesn't affect their use of their tools. I find this model to accurately describe quite a lot interactions in the general tech sphere. So for instance in programming, the group 1) is what you call "hackers", and the primary folks who get religious over editors or programming languages. Group 2) mostly looks at it and says "meh". Those are the "product-focused" people, the "professionals". Group 3) are kids that try to flock to CS because it's cool and pays a lot. Or, Google screwed up the deployment of Glass, because they marketed and sold it to rich people from Group 3) instead of Group 1) (Glass itself wasn't a good enough tool to create the Group 2) around it.). Or all the remarks about how technology companies dumb down everything. That's Group 1) complaining that Group 2) designs stuff for Group 3).

mentat 11y ago

This ends up sounding like "kids these days". Did you build your own computer? From the gates up? Oh, well then you're not a real engineer... It's usually an ego based distinction too.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Maybe, but it's hard to argue there isn't something to it. I think for each technology you can distinguish three types of users. 1) Those who care about it for itself - in this case the ones assembling their own drones, or willing to at least understand them on a deep level. 2) Those who treat it as just a tool, means to an end - think people doing air photos for money with drones. And 3), tourists - those who don't know a thing about the tech, don't want to know about it, but come drooling because it's cool and shiny. Usually the third group does stupid shit (as in stupid stupid, not smart stupid), the first one gets angry at "kids these days", and the second doesn't care as long as it doesn't affect their use of their tools. I find this model to accurately describe quite a lot interactions in the general tech sphere. So for instance in programming, the group 1) is what you call "hackers", and the primary folks who get religious over editors or programming languages. Group 2) mostly looks at it and says "meh". Those are the "product-focused" people, the "professionals". Group 3) are kids that try to flock to CS because it's cool and pays a lot. Or, Google screwed up the deployment of Glass, because they marketed and sold it to rich people from Group 3) instead of Group 1) (Glass itself wasn't a good enough tool to create the Group 2) around it.). Or all the remarks about how technology companies dumb down everything. That's Group 1) complaining that Group 2) designs stuff for Group 3).