2 ms·

Well, software is knowledge work and it's in big part creative. I am not sure that construction - where people are trained to do one thing in only a few certain

by papito 4y ago

Well, software is knowledge work and it's in big part creative. I am not sure that construction - where people are trained to do one thing in only a few certain ways - is that similar. I mean, surely there are "oh crap" moments when something not foreseen needs to be addressed, but I don't assume each construction project is a product of spontaneous creativity and improvisation?

hotpotamus 4y ago
I don't believe anyone has ever even made a successful brick-laying robot, and all that needs to do is lay bricks in a straight line. Perhaps the work is more creative/problem solving than you believe.
- deleted 4y ago
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- namelessoracle 4y ago
  Laying bricks involves more than putting bricks in a straight line, thats why all the brick laying automation has failed. You know that im sure.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    I do know that, but I also know that not every brick job is like trying to build the dome on the Florence Cathedral - it's much more like playing with legos. My point is that perhaps people shouldn't dismiss jobs as trivial. Playing Chess is trivial to a computer now, but laying bricks seems near impossible.
corrral 4y ago
It has not been my experience that for at least 95% of developers their needing to exhibit "spontaneous creativity and improvisation" to a degree greater than what a contractor might do while planning how to run a water line, is a good sign. As in construction or home repair or whatever, it's more likely that it means the person doesn't know the right way to do it. The fact that we often have to do semi-creative things is more a sign that our industry is immature and shitty, than that the work is inherently much more creative than construction work. We keep trying to make spherical houses even though it'd be a hell of a lot cheaper, faster, and in many ways better, to just make ordinary ones. Then we pat ourselves on the back when we "creatively" figure out how to fit parts and furniture designed for normal-ass buildings into the curved-walled rooms of our spherical ones. Meanwhile the customer just wanted a fucking house and didn't care what shape it was.
- foobiekr 4y ago
  100% agreed with this. And you're not even talking about all the resume-and-trend-based software development that goes on. I met a team that had put months into building a simple job queue. They had a combination of a zookeeper and kafka cluster, an nginx instance, an API process to receive the inbound HTTP put/get, a database writer reading the kafka topic, a database, etc. It was crazy. The lead just had no idea how to build something simple. I've seen tons of stuff like this. It is not unusual at all and really is about how immature the industry is.

by papito 4y ago

hotpotamus 4y ago

I don't believe anyone has ever even made a successful brick-laying robot, and all that needs to do is lay bricks in a straight line. Perhaps the work is more creative/problem solving than you believe.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
namelessoracle 4y ago
Laying bricks involves more than putting bricks in a straight line, thats why all the brick laying automation has failed. You know that im sure.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  I do know that, but I also know that not every brick job is like trying to build the dome on the Florence Cathedral - it's much more like playing with legos. My point is that perhaps people shouldn't dismiss jobs as trivial. Playing Chess is trivial to a computer now, but laying bricks seems near impossible.

corrral 4y ago

It has not been my experience that for at least 95% of developers their needing to exhibit "spontaneous creativity and improvisation" to a degree greater than what a contractor might do while planning how to run a water line, is a good sign. As in construction or home repair or whatever, it's more likely that it means the person doesn't know the right way to do it. The fact that we often have to do semi-creative things is more a sign that our industry is immature and shitty, than that the work is inherently much more creative than construction work. We keep trying to make spherical houses even though it'd be a hell of a lot cheaper, faster, and in many ways better, to just make ordinary ones. Then we pat ourselves on the back when we "creatively" figure out how to fit parts and furniture designed for normal-ass buildings into the curved-walled rooms of our spherical ones. Meanwhile the customer just wanted a fucking house and didn't care what shape it was.

foobiekr 4y ago
100% agreed with this. And you're not even talking about all the resume-and-trend-based software development that goes on. I met a team that had put months into building a simple job queue. They had a combination of a zookeeper and kafka cluster, an nginx instance, an API process to receive the inbound HTTP put/get, a database writer reading the kafka topic, a database, etc. It was crazy. The lead just had no idea how to build something simple. I've seen tons of stuff like this. It is not unusual at all and really is about how immature the industry is.