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Almost no-one has "secret painting methods", or "secret plumbing methods". For plumbing, building codes dictate the range of solutions that are available for a

Almost no-one has "secret painting methods", or "secret plumbing methods". For plumbing, building codes dictate the range of solutions that are available for any given problem, and they're not secret (but buying a guide can be expensive.) However, painters, plumbers, and other trades definitely have tips and techniques that they've learned through experience and from mentors, and you won't find much of that being given away freely. You've got to learn it the way they did, through hard work and apprenticeship. And that's ok, because those skills require mastery to use properly, and that's true in software development too.

paganel 10y ago
> However, painters, plumbers, and other trades definitely have tips and techniques that they've learned through experience and from mentors, and you won't find much of that being given away freely. Exactly this. My father is a civil engineer who's now in his early 60s, and he recently got to work with colleagues much younger than him. He told me that said colleagues didn't know some trade-related stuff which hadn't got covered in university courses (like how to reinforce earth ditches when digging in mountainous terrain with probable heavy rains) but which was paramount in keeping the work going (not much that you can do once a ditch collapses because of heavy rain). He told me that in this instance he had instructed his younger colleagues on what was the correct procedure to take, but he also told me that he's got other professional secrets that he's not ready to share just yet.
- estebank 10y ago
  > but he also told me that he's got other professional secrets that he's not ready to share just yet. I'm curious enough to ask: why?
  - paganel 10y ago
    For job security, I think. We're lucky enough as programmers not to have to worry about that too much, but when you're a civil engineer in a quite poor part of the country and the continent (I'm talking Eastern Europe) you do not have much better other options.

paganel 10y ago

> However, painters, plumbers, and other trades definitely have tips and techniques that they've learned through experience and from mentors, and you won't find much of that being given away freely. Exactly this. My father is a civil engineer who's now in his early 60s, and he recently got to work with colleagues much younger than him. He told me that said colleagues didn't know some trade-related stuff which hadn't got covered in university courses (like how to reinforce earth ditches when digging in mountainous terrain with probable heavy rains) but which was paramount in keeping the work going (not much that you can do once a ditch collapses because of heavy rain). He told me that in this instance he had instructed his younger colleagues on what was the correct procedure to take, but he also told me that he's got other professional secrets that he's not ready to share just yet.

estebank 10y ago
> but he also told me that he's got other professional secrets that he's not ready to share just yet. I'm curious enough to ask: why?
- paganel 10y ago
  For job security, I think. We're lucky enough as programmers not to have to worry about that too much, but when you're a civil engineer in a quite poor part of the country and the continent (I'm talking Eastern Europe) you do not have much better other options.