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I mostly agree with you. I've been a full-time software engineer for the past 28 years and a part-time handyman for the past 5 months. One of the biggest differ

I mostly agree with you. I've been a full-time software engineer for the past 28 years and a part-time handyman for the past 5 months. One of the biggest differences that you don't mention is the use of your body. Software engineering is purely intellectual -- often to the detriment of your body (or mine, anyways) since it's often the case where I sit at the keyboard for hours on end, day after day. As a handyman, your body necessarily is a key part of the work you do. Lifting tools, materials, carrying them, getting into weird positions to access the problem area (under bathroom sink for example). The other aspect is the physical nature of the work. The work is tangible. You can take a photo of the thing that needs to be fixed before the repair/construction and then another at the end and compare the before/after photos. Even if you don't care about the photos, you can still see the tangible, physical end-result of your work. With software engineering, at best it's usually just a status update on a Jira ticket. Regarding AI technologies, I agree that it's extremely unlikely that AI will take over the work. It's possible that may help in some diagnostic cases. I strongly disagree with "all the out of work engineers and designers will move into those industries". Why? Many (perhaps most even) software engineers that I've worked with are too lazy or too proud to do handyman type work. Some of the handyman work can be physically quite taxing and some of it can be quite humbling. Examples of taxing work - when you're doing a gate rebuild/repair in 107 degree temperature in direct sun. Example of humbling work - opening up p-traps under sinks and having some of the smelly, dirty water splash on you.

lostphilosopher 3y ago
I’m less concerned about the supply of handymen inflating and more concerned about demand falling. If AI really does replace a huge portion of the people with the money to hire handymen and plumbers and the property to need them where do they get the work from? More people will DIY out of necessity even if the results are worse because they won’t have another option and fewer people will have the property to maintain in the first place.
spenczar5 3y ago
Those are good distinctions. I'm a 13-year software engineer, and a 4-year part time finish carpenter. An important distinction that comes up for me a lot is that it's much harder to fix mistakes with physical stuff. I can rapidly iterate on software, try stuff, see what works, play with a concept. But if I do that with wood and nails, I'm going to be in for trouble. Each idea costs material, and if it's a repair, there can be no going back. "Iterative development" really isn't a thing. This has gotten me in trouble - my instinct is to explore a problem, but I find that physical stuff requires more intellectual planning up-front, counterintuitively.
- cwalv 3y ago
  IMO this is the defining characteristic of software development. It's why I love it, and why the processes that support doing it well are different from other types of projects. I also think other disciplines will inevitably move more in this direction. Once things can be accurately modeled and tested with computers, the iteration cycle becomes similar. You do have to eventually build the "machine", but I think that will become more and more automated, sortof like a compiler.
  - eternityforest 3y ago
    If you do 3D printing, make furniture, or anything like that, you can sometimes carry over ideas from programming. Once you've built something yourself, you start seeing problems like "Oh, this assembly has multiple parts that all need to be done in place, how can I change it so I can build it all in the shop and just screw it in". But with software, we try as hard as we can to make it impossible to mess up. With physical goods, we seem to prefer things that can be messed up, things that only look good with expensive materials, etc. Things that by their existence, demonstrate the skill of the maker, and the wealth of the buyer. We don't really know what the limits of pocket screws joinery and cardboard tabletops are, because... nobody is trying to make something out of cardboard that lasts a century, they just assume it will be thrown away. With software, we start with the assumption that no programmer is up to the challenge, nobody will ever understand a large system, no user will ever be competent, etc, and figure out how to make amazing things anyway.
- dajtxx 3y ago
  My hobby is model engineering and it's quite stressful when you're hours or days into a part and every new operation risks ruining it. Not only have you wasted that time and effort but also the material, and if you stuff it up you get to do it all again for no benefit at all - it's all cost and loss. Read a drawing wrong? Another chunk of time & metal wasted. It's a frustrating and expensive hobby. That's what I think is so great about software - almost nothing is irretrievable and even if it is it's not that big a deal to redo, other than for whoever paid you to make those mistakes! But software is also ephemeral and for all but a few of us it's hard to point to something and say 'I made that, it's works, and it's really cool' and have other people get it. When you drive off on the steam loco you just finished it has a bit more impact! Even my teenage son said "it's pretty cool to build something that moves under its own power".
karaterobot 3y ago
> One of the biggest differences that you don't mention is the use of your body. Oh, for sure. I was a dev for many years, then switched to product design. What I left out of my first comment was that my older brother is a maintenance guy for a hospital—basically a handyman with an office in the basement. Growing up, it was clear that he was at least as smart as me, but at a certain point he went one direction and I went another. Cut to 25-30 years later: his body is a wreck, mine is okay (modulo poor diet and lack of exercise), he's always broke, and I'm doing alright. When I said that our jobs are very similar, I just meant that, like a handyman, much of what a SWE does is basically attaching one thing to another thing while cursing. That's a joke, but you get what I mean. My point was that neither are rocket science, but we shouldn't think we're especially smart for being programmers just because we get paid too much for it. Add the physical element of handyman work to that and that just underlines the point I wanted to make. > I strongly disagree with "all the out of work engineers and designers will move into those industries. This is timely. I said that because I was thinking about it yesterday, when talking to some friends about what they'd do if and when AI obviated their current jobs (which is in the realm of possibility). A common answer was that they'd become electricians. I think there are at least two problems with that: one is the physical aspect of being a tradesman, which nobody thinks about. The other is that there would certainly be more people going into the trades, not less, if those industries became a safe harbor from AI. Many of these people would wash out, sure, but at least some of them (like yourself) wouldn't. That, combined with all the upper-middle-class people being suddenly broke, would probably drive down wages for people who work with their hands. I can't imagine anything else happening, though of course I could be wrong.
- SamBam 3y ago
  Having a lot more electricians is not necessarily a bad thing. I've seen some estimates of the number of new electricians the US would need in order to handle the electrification of the country if we want to stave off further climate change, and it was in the tens of millions. This number will be very difficult to achieve, but that does mean that being an electrician should continue to be a good job for quite a long time, even if lots of new people go into it.
  - 3y ago
whartung 3y ago
For me the biggest difference is that handyman mistakes tend to tangible, and potentially worse to repair than the original problem. Software is easy to reset back and clean the slate for another go. It's this kind of thing that deters me from taking on tasks, fear of making things worse, digging the hole deeper, etc. Then there's the whole losing focus, leaving it half done, etc. issue.
- Libcat99 3y ago
  This is a big one for me. I have lots of household projects I believe I'm capable of completing, however many of them require taking something out of commission until the project is done, and if I screw up that could be longer than I actually have before I need it.
dharmab 3y ago
> Example of humbling work - opening up p-traps under sinks and having some of the smelly, dirty water splash on you. This cannot be understated. You can tell if a person has never cleaned a toilet in their life- you can hear it in their voice.

lostphilosopher 3y ago

I’m less concerned about the supply of handymen inflating and more concerned about demand falling. If AI really does replace a huge portion of the people with the money to hire handymen and plumbers and the property to need them where do they get the work from? More people will DIY out of necessity even if the results are worse because they won’t have another option and fewer people will have the property to maintain in the first place.

spenczar5 3y ago

Those are good distinctions. I'm a 13-year software engineer, and a 4-year part time finish carpenter. An important distinction that comes up for me a lot is that it's much harder to fix mistakes with physical stuff. I can rapidly iterate on software, try stuff, see what works, play with a concept. But if I do that with wood and nails, I'm going to be in for trouble. Each idea costs material, and if it's a repair, there can be no going back. "Iterative development" really isn't a thing. This has gotten me in trouble - my instinct is to explore a problem, but I find that physical stuff requires more intellectual planning up-front, counterintuitively.

cwalv 3y ago
IMO this is the defining characteristic of software development. It's why I love it, and why the processes that support doing it well are different from other types of projects. I also think other disciplines will inevitably move more in this direction. Once things can be accurately modeled and tested with computers, the iteration cycle becomes similar. You do have to eventually build the "machine", but I think that will become more and more automated, sortof like a compiler.
- eternityforest 3y ago
  If you do 3D printing, make furniture, or anything like that, you can sometimes carry over ideas from programming. Once you've built something yourself, you start seeing problems like "Oh, this assembly has multiple parts that all need to be done in place, how can I change it so I can build it all in the shop and just screw it in". But with software, we try as hard as we can to make it impossible to mess up. With physical goods, we seem to prefer things that can be messed up, things that only look good with expensive materials, etc. Things that by their existence, demonstrate the skill of the maker, and the wealth of the buyer. We don't really know what the limits of pocket screws joinery and cardboard tabletops are, because... nobody is trying to make something out of cardboard that lasts a century, they just assume it will be thrown away. With software, we start with the assumption that no programmer is up to the challenge, nobody will ever understand a large system, no user will ever be competent, etc, and figure out how to make amazing things anyway.
dajtxx 3y ago
My hobby is model engineering and it's quite stressful when you're hours or days into a part and every new operation risks ruining it. Not only have you wasted that time and effort but also the material, and if you stuff it up you get to do it all again for no benefit at all - it's all cost and loss. Read a drawing wrong? Another chunk of time & metal wasted. It's a frustrating and expensive hobby. That's what I think is so great about software - almost nothing is irretrievable and even if it is it's not that big a deal to redo, other than for whoever paid you to make those mistakes! But software is also ephemeral and for all but a few of us it's hard to point to something and say 'I made that, it's works, and it's really cool' and have other people get it. When you drive off on the steam loco you just finished it has a bit more impact! Even my teenage son said "it's pretty cool to build something that moves under its own power".

karaterobot 3y ago

> One of the biggest differences that you don't mention is the use of your body. Oh, for sure. I was a dev for many years, then switched to product design. What I left out of my first comment was that my older brother is a maintenance guy for a hospital—basically a handyman with an office in the basement. Growing up, it was clear that he was at least as smart as me, but at a certain point he went one direction and I went another. Cut to 25-30 years later: his body is a wreck, mine is okay (modulo poor diet and lack of exercise), he's always broke, and I'm doing alright. When I said that our jobs are very similar, I just meant that, like a handyman, much of what a SWE does is basically attaching one thing to another thing while cursing. That's a joke, but you get what I mean. My point was that neither are rocket science, but we shouldn't think we're especially smart for being programmers just because we get paid too much for it. Add the physical element of handyman work to that and that just underlines the point I wanted to make. > I strongly disagree with "all the out of work engineers and designers will move into those industries. This is timely. I said that because I was thinking about it yesterday, when talking to some friends about what they'd do if and when AI obviated their current jobs (which is in the realm of possibility). A common answer was that they'd become electricians. I think there are at least two problems with that: one is the physical aspect of being a tradesman, which nobody thinks about. The other is that there would certainly be more people going into the trades, not less, if those industries became a safe harbor from AI. Many of these people would wash out, sure, but at least some of them (like yourself) wouldn't. That, combined with all the upper-middle-class people being suddenly broke, would probably drive down wages for people who work with their hands. I can't imagine anything else happening, though of course I could be wrong.

SamBam 3y ago
Having a lot more electricians is not necessarily a bad thing. I've seen some estimates of the number of new electricians the US would need in order to handle the electrification of the country if we want to stave off further climate change, and it was in the tens of millions. This number will be very difficult to achieve, but that does mean that being an electrician should continue to be a good job for quite a long time, even if lots of new people go into it.
- 3y ago

whartung 3y ago

For me the biggest difference is that handyman mistakes tend to tangible, and potentially worse to repair than the original problem. Software is easy to reset back and clean the slate for another go. It's this kind of thing that deters me from taking on tasks, fear of making things worse, digging the hole deeper, etc. Then there's the whole losing focus, leaving it half done, etc. issue.

Libcat99 3y ago
This is a big one for me. I have lots of household projects I believe I'm capable of completing, however many of them require taking something out of commission until the project is done, and if I screw up that could be longer than I actually have before I need it.

dharmab 3y ago

> Example of humbling work - opening up p-traps under sinks and having some of the smelly, dirty water splash on you. This cannot be understated. You can tell if a person has never cleaned a toilet in their life- you can hear it in their voice.