16 ms·

Keep in mind that it's easy to you because you're from that particular field. For a lot of people software development is still basically witchcraft.

cbluth 8y ago
"In obscurity lies opportunity"
- booleandilemma 8y ago
  Job security by obscurity? :)
c22 8y ago
So is plumbing.
- minor3rd 8y ago
  I had a plumber over for some fixes about a month ago, and he saw me doing some coding on my laptop. He made a comment like "I have absolutely no clue how any of that works... it is wizardry to me". I said "I'm watching you fix plumbing issues around my house, and that is wizardry to me". I think we could probably learn each others' jobs if we really tried, but the point is that all things can seem like magic until you learn them.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    In both cases, it probably boils down to shit ton of small and easy things. Each individual unit of knowledge would be trivial for a typical person to grasp, and also mostly useless. Only together they form this large lattice of interlinked concepts that can be used for "doing magic" - but also can't be easily explained.
- kazagistar 8y ago
  It's no surprise then that plumbing also pays pretty well.
- IshKebab 8y ago
  I've done a bit of plumbing and I would say it is much easier than programming. Even basic "plumbing" programming.
  - jack9 8y ago
    It is easier, but it's physically more demanding (including being far more dangerous).
    - IshKebab 8y ago
      Well being physically more demanding than programming doesn't say a lot!
  - c22 8y ago
    I think there is a spectrum of difficulty in both arenas. For instance, I found writing some javascript code to toggle css around my personal website was far easier (and required less math) than sizing the pipes in the house I am designing. That said, I have also worked on much more complicated software projects that demanded more effort on my part. I assume there exist more complicated plumbing challenges as well.
- owlmirror 8y ago
  And plumping is not badly paid either. But it's a trade that you can learn in relative little time and it's a field that you don't constantly have to readapt your approach. someone who learned plumbing 20 years ago is not outdated. meaning that the supply of people who can fix your pipes is far larger than if it would be similar with IT. and also there are a lot more people around who have the mental capabilities to learn plumbing than there are people around who are capable of consistently apply the abstract thinking patterns that involve software development.
  - vvanders 8y ago
    Don't be so sure, Pex and the like wasn't on the scene 20 years ago.
    - ntsplnkv2 8y ago
      It's also unfair because plumbers deal with buildings decades old - some even a century. They may have extremely old systems and knowledge of that is important.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - RichardCA 8y ago
        Where I live in Los Angeles we recently acquired the USS Iowa, a WWII battleship built in the 1930's. One day I was there, going to the bathroom, and one of the maintenance workers happened to be there and we started chatting. Turns out he was a former SeaBee who was there to retrofit the very old saltwater-based plumbing system to connect to the civilian freshwater system so people could use the head in a normal way. A very non-trivial and specific skillset. If you have ever visited a museum ship you can be sure they had people who knew this stuff.
  - c22 8y ago
- jgalentine007 8y ago
  Really? Sh*t flows down hill seems to be about the crux of it!
  - __blockcipher__ 8y ago
    Sometimes the shit flows uphill
    - freehunter 8y ago
      And sometimes shit flows downhill but you need it to flow uphill. And sometimes shit that's flowing uphill suddenly flows downhill unexpectedly and in a dramatic fashion, necessitating emergency fixes before developing a better solution in a time crunch.
  - alexanderdmitri 8y ago
    you don't happen to be a project manager?
- 21 8y ago
  A random person from the street would be able to fix a small plumbing problem. Water and pipes are well into the normal day to day experience. A random person from the street would not be able to fix a trivial problem/bug in some software - let's say a missing runtime package on linux.
  - c22 8y ago
    Having helped people with both software and plumbing problems I am not convinced that "a random person from the street" would be able to trivially tackle any plumbing problem. In my experience random people consider both software and plumbing to be black boxes they don't need to understand. Most people would have no idea what tools to buy to even approach the problem. I have no doubt that with the right documentation and a little handholding the average Joe could figure out a fix for both small plumbing leaks or trivial bugs in software, but it would take much more experience to design the plumbing system in a large building or to architect a new complicated software application.
    - stickfigure 8y ago
      The parent didn't say any plumbing problem. I think you wildly overestimate the cleverness of the average Joe. I watch users struggle with basic GUI concepts. Add in learning a specialized language and support libraries? Joe can figure out a wrench by looking at it. He's not going to get very far with a shell prompt.
      - c22 8y ago
        Sorry, I should have italicized any in my post. As in I don't think the average user can solve any plumbing problem or fix any software bugs without additional resources: documentation and/or assistance. At least on a command line you can get somewhere with trial and error: $ ? ?: command not found $ what do I do? No command 'what' found, did you mean: (...) $ help me bash: help: no help topics match 'me'. Try 'help help' or 'man -k me' or 'info me'. $ help help (...) A diy plumber who doesn't know of the existence of teflon tape is always going to have some leaky joints. However, as I asserted, I agree that most people can figure all this stuff out pretty easily, I just think most people are too intimidated or just not interested in trying in the first place. To put it another way, I've found that the concepts of "hierarchical filesystems" and "drain waste vent stacks" are equally foreign and equally accessible to average laypeople.

cbluth 8y ago

"In obscurity lies opportunity"

booleandilemma 8y ago
Job security by obscurity? :)

c22 8y ago

So is plumbing.

minor3rd 8y ago
I had a plumber over for some fixes about a month ago, and he saw me doing some coding on my laptop. He made a comment like "I have absolutely no clue how any of that works... it is wizardry to me". I said "I'm watching you fix plumbing issues around my house, and that is wizardry to me". I think we could probably learn each others' jobs if we really tried, but the point is that all things can seem like magic until you learn them.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  In both cases, it probably boils down to shit ton of small and easy things. Each individual unit of knowledge would be trivial for a typical person to grasp, and also mostly useless. Only together they form this large lattice of interlinked concepts that can be used for "doing magic" - but also can't be easily explained.
kazagistar 8y ago
It's no surprise then that plumbing also pays pretty well.
IshKebab 8y ago
I've done a bit of plumbing and I would say it is much easier than programming. Even basic "plumbing" programming.
- jack9 8y ago
  It is easier, but it's physically more demanding (including being far more dangerous).
  - IshKebab 8y ago
    Well being physically more demanding than programming doesn't say a lot!
- c22 8y ago
  I think there is a spectrum of difficulty in both arenas. For instance, I found writing some javascript code to toggle css around my personal website was far easier (and required less math) than sizing the pipes in the house I am designing. That said, I have also worked on much more complicated software projects that demanded more effort on my part. I assume there exist more complicated plumbing challenges as well.
owlmirror 8y ago
And plumping is not badly paid either. But it's a trade that you can learn in relative little time and it's a field that you don't constantly have to readapt your approach. someone who learned plumbing 20 years ago is not outdated. meaning that the supply of people who can fix your pipes is far larger than if it would be similar with IT. and also there are a lot more people around who have the mental capabilities to learn plumbing than there are people around who are capable of consistently apply the abstract thinking patterns that involve software development.
- vvanders 8y ago
  Don't be so sure, Pex and the like wasn't on the scene 20 years ago.
  - ntsplnkv2 8y ago
    It's also unfair because plumbers deal with buildings decades old - some even a century. They may have extremely old systems and knowledge of that is important.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - RichardCA 8y ago
      Where I live in Los Angeles we recently acquired the USS Iowa, a WWII battleship built in the 1930's. One day I was there, going to the bathroom, and one of the maintenance workers happened to be there and we started chatting. Turns out he was a former SeaBee who was there to retrofit the very old saltwater-based plumbing system to connect to the civilian freshwater system so people could use the head in a normal way. A very non-trivial and specific skillset. If you have ever visited a museum ship you can be sure they had people who knew this stuff.
- c22 8y ago
jgalentine007 8y ago
Really? Sh*t flows down hill seems to be about the crux of it!
- __blockcipher__ 8y ago
  Sometimes the shit flows uphill
  - freehunter 8y ago
    And sometimes shit flows downhill but you need it to flow uphill. And sometimes shit that's flowing uphill suddenly flows downhill unexpectedly and in a dramatic fashion, necessitating emergency fixes before developing a better solution in a time crunch.
- alexanderdmitri 8y ago
  you don't happen to be a project manager?
21 8y ago
A random person from the street would be able to fix a small plumbing problem. Water and pipes are well into the normal day to day experience. A random person from the street would not be able to fix a trivial problem/bug in some software - let's say a missing runtime package on linux.
- c22 8y ago
  Having helped people with both software and plumbing problems I am not convinced that "a random person from the street" would be able to trivially tackle any plumbing problem. In my experience random people consider both software and plumbing to be black boxes they don't need to understand. Most people would have no idea what tools to buy to even approach the problem. I have no doubt that with the right documentation and a little handholding the average Joe could figure out a fix for both small plumbing leaks or trivial bugs in software, but it would take much more experience to design the plumbing system in a large building or to architect a new complicated software application.
  - stickfigure 8y ago
    The parent didn't say any plumbing problem. I think you wildly overestimate the cleverness of the average Joe. I watch users struggle with basic GUI concepts. Add in learning a specialized language and support libraries? Joe can figure out a wrench by looking at it. He's not going to get very far with a shell prompt.
    - c22 8y ago
      Sorry, I should have italicized any in my post. As in I don't think the average user can solve any plumbing problem or fix any software bugs without additional resources: documentation and/or assistance. At least on a command line you can get somewhere with trial and error: $ ? ?: command not found $ what do I do? No command 'what' found, did you mean: (...) $ help me bash: help: no help topics match 'me'. Try 'help help' or 'man -k me' or 'info me'. $ help help (...) A diy plumber who doesn't know of the existence of teflon tape is always going to have some leaky joints. However, as I asserted, I agree that most people can figure all this stuff out pretty easily, I just think most people are too intimidated or just not interested in trying in the first place. To put it another way, I've found that the concepts of "hierarchical filesystems" and "drain waste vent stacks" are equally foreign and equally accessible to average laypeople.