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As an engineer myself I do agree with this in a sense. Engineers lack creativity and they also tend to lack analytical skills. There's a high focus on "best pra

As an engineer myself I do agree with this in a sense. Engineers lack creativity and they also tend to lack analytical skills. There's a high focus on "best practices" and design patterns without the critical thinking on "why." So you tend to see the over-application of these kinds of things everywhere in code. If I were to describe the style of thinking engineers tend to have, the best word is "religious" with grand delusions of being "analytical." I work in a golang shop where engineers were stupefyingly trying to port Java Design patterns over to the language. I literally told them straight up that most of these design patterns are horrible and bad for code. I told them about the huge pitfalls of dependency injection and Nobody even wanted to listen or believe me. One guy tried to have all init functions that create structs replaced with a builder pattern. Literally can people not see how the builder pattern enables the creation of structures with invalid state? Why? Why? Why? I think because the builder pattern is prettier and more elegant looking. Overall though these engineers are miss applying their analytical thinking. It's only when I referenced quotations by Rob Pike (creator of golang) on how Rob Pike designed Golang to get away from OOP did people start to actually listen to me. Appeal to authority rather than logic, that's how "analytical" engineers think. Obviously these engineers love OOP as a language they also like Golang which is the antithesis of OOP. The fact that these engineers can exist with conflicting beliefs tells me that their isn't an analytical bone in their body. They worship the buzzwords of OOP and Golang for religious reasons.

paganel 7y ago
> I work in a golang shop where engineers were stupefyingly trying to port Java Design patterns over to the language (...) It's only when I referenced quotations by Rob Pike (creator of golang) on how Rob Pike designed Golang to get away from OOP did people start to actually listen to me I mentioned this "Python is not Java" [1] blog-post in my first interview for a job as a Python programmer 15 years ago (I got the job), interesting that some things seem to never change. [1] https://dirtsimple.org/2004/12/python-is-not-java.html https://dirtsimple.org/2004/12/python-is-not-java.html
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  Ah that's just syntactical stuff. Structurally python OOP and Java OOP are similar. The thing with Golang is that you're not even suppose to think in terms of "Objects." It's literally suppose to be a step backwards towards C like languages.
booleandilemma 7y ago
Engineers lack creativity What? The etymology of the word literally means to “contrive or devise” Engineers are creators, to say they lack creativity is nonsense.
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  The post above is a perfect example. He says engineers are "creators" and to say "creators" lack "creativity" is nonsense. This is displays an immense lack of analytical skills. First off, there exists in this world people who are bad at their jobs, shoe makers who are bad at making shoes and artists who are bad at art. So it definitely makes sense that engineers can lack creativity. Another way of putting it: Creators can lack creativity. This is not a contradiction. Additionally I didn't say "no creativity" I said "lack" meaning that their's a spectrum and (software) engineers tend to have less of it when compared to someone like a fine artist. Also this engineer literally looked up the etymology of the word "creativity." This was an unnecessary detour and displays lack of the ability to think more generally. I'm using the word "creativity" in the same sense as how 99% of the human population uses it. No need to look up the definition of "creativity" just to assist in your arguments. Of course I'm not saying All engineers lack creativity. I'm saying, on the job, and in my own anecdotal experience... most engineers lack creativity. It's a small few who keep the ball moving forward.
btrettel 7y ago
> Appeal to authority rather than logic, that's how "analytical" or engineers think. This describes a large fraction of engineers I've worked with. I think the popular media would portray this as "analytical" when it's anything but. I don't think this has much to do with the training of engineers and instead reflects natural tendencies of most people to take the easy route. "Passing the buck" to some established authority is simply easier. And it works most of the time. Unfortunately the "appeal to authority" types often drown out the actual analytical folks, so when there's a problem with the authorities, little happens.
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  Yeah you're right. I probably framed it too narrowly against engineers. A better way to put it is people are biased creatures and engineers are no different even though there is a tendency to believe they are more analytical or creative. I disagree with you on the "easy route" though. I don't think engineers appeal to authority because of an intentional decision to take an easy route. I think engineers do it because it's just an inmate bias people have. People's identities and beliefs are dictated more by emotion and pre-existing notions rather then logic.
  - btrettel 7y ago
    > I disagree with you on the "easy route" though. I don't think engineers appeal to authority because of an intentional decision to take an easy route. I think engineers do it because it's just an inmate bias people have. People's identities and beliefs are dictated more by emotion and pre-existing notions rather then logic. This is a strong possibility. In retrospect, I don't actually know the reasons why people defer to authorities so often and was speculating. I'd be very interested in the reasons why and how, if possible, we could influence people to be more critical.

paganel 7y ago

> I work in a golang shop where engineers were stupefyingly trying to port Java Design patterns over to the language (...) It's only when I referenced quotations by Rob Pike (creator of golang) on how Rob Pike designed Golang to get away from OOP did people start to actually listen to me I mentioned this "Python is not Java" [1] blog-post in my first interview for a job as a Python programmer 15 years ago (I got the job), interesting that some things seem to never change. [1] https://dirtsimple.org/2004/12/python-is-not-java.html https://dirtsimple.org/2004/12/python-is-not-java.html

crimsonalucard 7y ago
Ah that's just syntactical stuff. Structurally python OOP and Java OOP are similar. The thing with Golang is that you're not even suppose to think in terms of "Objects." It's literally suppose to be a step backwards towards C like languages.

booleandilemma 7y ago

Engineers lack creativity What? The etymology of the word literally means to “contrive or devise” Engineers are creators, to say they lack creativity is nonsense.

crimsonalucard 7y ago
The post above is a perfect example. He says engineers are "creators" and to say "creators" lack "creativity" is nonsense. This is displays an immense lack of analytical skills. First off, there exists in this world people who are bad at their jobs, shoe makers who are bad at making shoes and artists who are bad at art. So it definitely makes sense that engineers can lack creativity. Another way of putting it: Creators can lack creativity. This is not a contradiction. Additionally I didn't say "no creativity" I said "lack" meaning that their's a spectrum and (software) engineers tend to have less of it when compared to someone like a fine artist. Also this engineer literally looked up the etymology of the word "creativity." This was an unnecessary detour and displays lack of the ability to think more generally. I'm using the word "creativity" in the same sense as how 99% of the human population uses it. No need to look up the definition of "creativity" just to assist in your arguments. Of course I'm not saying All engineers lack creativity. I'm saying, on the job, and in my own anecdotal experience... most engineers lack creativity. It's a small few who keep the ball moving forward.

btrettel 7y ago

> Appeal to authority rather than logic, that's how "analytical" or engineers think. This describes a large fraction of engineers I've worked with. I think the popular media would portray this as "analytical" when it's anything but. I don't think this has much to do with the training of engineers and instead reflects natural tendencies of most people to take the easy route. "Passing the buck" to some established authority is simply easier. And it works most of the time. Unfortunately the "appeal to authority" types often drown out the actual analytical folks, so when there's a problem with the authorities, little happens.

crimsonalucard 7y ago
Yeah you're right. I probably framed it too narrowly against engineers. A better way to put it is people are biased creatures and engineers are no different even though there is a tendency to believe they are more analytical or creative. I disagree with you on the "easy route" though. I don't think engineers appeal to authority because of an intentional decision to take an easy route. I think engineers do it because it's just an inmate bias people have. People's identities and beliefs are dictated more by emotion and pre-existing notions rather then logic.
- btrettel 7y ago
  > I disagree with you on the "easy route" though. I don't think engineers appeal to authority because of an intentional decision to take an easy route. I think engineers do it because it's just an inmate bias people have. People's identities and beliefs are dictated more by emotion and pre-existing notions rather then logic. This is a strong possibility. In retrospect, I don't actually know the reasons why people defer to authorities so often and was speculating. I'd be very interested in the reasons why and how, if possible, we could influence people to be more critical.