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The Fountainhead and Software Engineering
- thundergolfer 8y agoAs someone who's got an Architecture degree, read The Fountainhead, and works as a Software Engineer, my response to this is pretty hearty skepticism. To make a response to the article's summary, which is > I am confident that giving engineers more autonomy and ownership will transform the way software is created and increase the quality of the results, and The Fountainhead provides an excellent example of what real autonomy and ownership look like. It is already well known that giving Software Engineers more autonomy and ownership can be excellent for productivity and software quality, and it's a bit laughable that the author says The Fountainhead is what "real" autonomy and ownership look like. Howard Roark is far less realistic a person than the majority of protagonists in fiction books, who themselves aren't of course realistic. Howard Roark is an argument in character form, and the universe of The Fountainhead is built to forward Rand's worldview, not be a vehicle for the exploration of life's conflicts and complexity.
- rarecoil 8y ago> the universe of The Fountainhead is built to forward Rand's worldview, not be a vehicle for the exploration of life's conflicts and complexity. This. I've also read The Fountainhead, and Roark's personality would not get him the same result in the real world. It's fantastic and fictional.
- ncmncm 8y agoThe Fountainhead is written to appeal to adolescent fantasies. It has worked very well for that purpose. Adolescents adore it for making them feel superior to everybody actually doing anything. Most people lose their adoration when they find that actually doing things is hard and takes actual, you know, work. Some don't, because they have discovered that not doing anything does not keep one from fantasizing about having done it.