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> 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 i
by 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 agoIt 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 agoOn 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 agoDo 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.