4 ms·

Agreed. My father is a carpenter and I helped him build our family cabin when I was a pre-teen. We did mostly all of the building except putting up the trusse

Agreed. My father is a carpenter and I helped him build our family cabin when I was a pre-teen. We did mostly all of the building except putting up the trusses and finishing the roof. My dad was smart enough to farm out that work. Now I write software and I work with a lot of people who dream of going off in the woods and building a cabin, as though it's the same as building software. I have to remind them that "there is no undo". "Measure twice, cut once" is a phrase for a reason. You can't refactor your cabin half way through building. Surprisingly many of them never even considered these things, let alone the tricks or techniques needed to do a good job. I think a lot of white collar workers see what blue collar workers do as perhaps difficult physically, but not mentally. But that couldn't be further from the truth. And this is especially true when you're trying to piece together an entire cabin by yourself.

dleslie 6y ago
> My dad was smart enough to farm out that work. What I find curious is that this viewpoint, while widely shared in trades, is not a universally shared value in tech. Many in our industry will prefer to write something themselves, or rewrite an existing project, rather than farm that work out to an expert or adapt to what they already have. Particularly in my segment, video games: it's all well and good to write a game engine for fun, but _so many_ indie studios spend enormous amounts of their time, effort and cash on developing new engines afresh. I can only imagine what the housing industry would be like if sub-contracting weren't as popular as it is. > I think a lot of white collar workers see what blue collar workers do as perhaps difficult physically, but not mentally. Aye, this is what I was alluding to as snobbish.
- bluGill 6y ago
  It is hard to look at something and realize that even though you can you shouldn't. I'm a programmer, I can write the engine. Several years later I have an engine. We have many new languages all the time for similar reasons, someone thinks they can write one (generally better) and forgets about all the effort it really takes and maybe they should do something else.
  - saltcured 6y ago
    On the flipside, a lot of software rework can be closer to the decision of whether to brush your own teeth, flush your own toilet, or make your own fried egg. It takes wisdom, experience, and a presumption about many other unspecified factors to determine whether these are really better to outsource or solve in-house...
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Do it for fun but don't fool yourself into believing you can do it better unless you want the game engine to be your product. Of course there are some special mechanics that require a novel engine but those are usually quite rare.
tstrimple 6y ago
> You can't refactor your cabin half way through building. Actually you can. And with the similar ramifications to the project budget and timeline.
polygotdomain 6y ago
>I think a lot of white collar workers see what blue collar workers do as perhaps difficult physically, but not mentally. But that couldn't be further from the truth. And this is especially true when you're trying to piece together an entire cabin by yourself. Agree completely. I have a project car and have a particular buddy who's a great mechanic. His understanding of the various systems on a wide range of cars is quite deep, and he was incredibly helpful when I got stuck with things. If it was just the physical effort, i would've been finished with the project years before I did, but the mental challenge of figuring out how one system worked and how that system needed to properly integrate with all the other system was far beyond what I thought it was. As a counterpoint, my buddy didn't get why I might be tired at the end of a long day of work. He didn't seem to get the connection that the high level of mental effort that software development could be physically tiring as well. There's a lot that white collar workers and blue collar workers can learn from each other, but you don't have to build a whole cabin or a project car or a whole application in order to see what things are like when the shoe is on the other foot.

dleslie 6y ago

> My dad was smart enough to farm out that work. What I find curious is that this viewpoint, while widely shared in trades, is not a universally shared value in tech. Many in our industry will prefer to write something themselves, or rewrite an existing project, rather than farm that work out to an expert or adapt to what they already have. Particularly in my segment, video games: it's all well and good to write a game engine for fun, but _so many_ indie studios spend enormous amounts of their time, effort and cash on developing new engines afresh. I can only imagine what the housing industry would be like if sub-contracting weren't as popular as it is. > I think a lot of white collar workers see what blue collar workers do as perhaps difficult physically, but not mentally. Aye, this is what I was alluding to as snobbish.

bluGill 6y ago
It is hard to look at something and realize that even though you can you shouldn't. I'm a programmer, I can write the engine. Several years later I have an engine. We have many new languages all the time for similar reasons, someone thinks they can write one (generally better) and forgets about all the effort it really takes and maybe they should do something else.
- saltcured 6y ago
  On the flipside, a lot of software rework can be closer to the decision of whether to brush your own teeth, flush your own toilet, or make your own fried egg. It takes wisdom, experience, and a presumption about many other unspecified factors to determine whether these are really better to outsource or solve in-house...
- imtringued 6y ago
  Do it for fun but don't fool yourself into believing you can do it better unless you want the game engine to be your product. Of course there are some special mechanics that require a novel engine but those are usually quite rare.

tstrimple 6y ago

> You can't refactor your cabin half way through building. Actually you can. And with the similar ramifications to the project budget and timeline.

polygotdomain 6y ago

>I think a lot of white collar workers see what blue collar workers do as perhaps difficult physically, but not mentally. But that couldn't be further from the truth. And this is especially true when you're trying to piece together an entire cabin by yourself. Agree completely. I have a project car and have a particular buddy who's a great mechanic. His understanding of the various systems on a wide range of cars is quite deep, and he was incredibly helpful when I got stuck with things. If it was just the physical effort, i would've been finished with the project years before I did, but the mental challenge of figuring out how one system worked and how that system needed to properly integrate with all the other system was far beyond what I thought it was. As a counterpoint, my buddy didn't get why I might be tired at the end of a long day of work. He didn't seem to get the connection that the high level of mental effort that software development could be physically tiring as well. There's a lot that white collar workers and blue collar workers can learn from each other, but you don't have to build a whole cabin or a project car or a whole application in order to see what things are like when the shoe is on the other foot.