@Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com it’s the same for me and i suspect that the way the down/upvotes for your comment have played out and that of @victorz@lemmy.world is indicative of the software engineering field’s proclivities of today.
my decade as a software engineer gave me the awareness that its most outspoken practitioners voice a viewpoint along the same vein as that @victorz@lemmy.world shared – as artisans working at their craft – and i think it lays bare their background and how they see the world and themselves in it.
my time in the field also gave me an anecdotal awareness of how popular the sentiment is despite an overwhelming majority not embracing it until influenced. in my later years in the field, several other engineers and i took it upon ourselves to formally train fresh graduates because we collectively became aware of the gaps between academia and the needs of our old-silicon employer.
i was the first to teach them because most were slated for operations roles and i was also the last because i was on the team responsible for new pushes to production. the other engineers and i agreed to this pattern because my decade+ of IT experience lent to a role more closely involved in day-to-day operations than my colleagues who did nothing other than software development.
for 6 years and without fail, the “students” at the first almost-week long bootcamp saw the work the same way i did – as ordinary technical work that’s skilled but not sacred or unique. after they spent the following almost-2-weeks with my colleagues and then returned to me for the final few days of company specific training, they began espousing this artisan perspective, the same as most of my colleagues had before them.
i shared this observation with the only other colleague that had a background and make up that was different than the others. she called herself an engineer like i did and she called my observation the “geek industrial complex”. she had been a software engineer since the 1990’s and told me about red hat’s “geek world” contest – a marketing facade based on the popular-at-the-time mtv show named “real world”. she said people calling themselves “artisans” or “craftsmen” instead of engineers was the same playbook: manufacturing a romantic identity to sell back to people who bought in, leading them to often gatekeep against others to prove their own authenticity. she said it was how they coped with being cogs while convincing themselves they were something more – a labor aristocracy that clocked in just like everyone else does.
i wasn’t sure what to make of it at first, but i started studying leftist politics not long afterwards and everything i’ve read & watched since then has reaffirmed to me that she was right.
Very interesting perspective, thank you for sharing that!
artisans working at their craft – and i think it lays bare their background and how they see the world and themselves in it.
I don’t think it has anything to do with how I see the world and myself in it, in my case specifically. When I say coding is a craft, I base it solely on the fact that problem solving using code can happen in so many different ways, and there will be almost as many code styles and problem solving styles as there are coders.
I’ve seen it when reviewing as many other people’s code as I have. I have reviewed what must be thousands of student coding assignments over the decade or so I was in academia, and for each assignment, there was almost no hand-in that was the same, despite the sometimes extremely narrow problem scope. Were they identical, they were usually suspected of cheating or collaborating too closely, and when confronted, usually admitted as much.
And in my soon-to-be decade in the private sector I’ve seen so many styles as well, even with coding style guides in place. And not just style discrepancies, but just thinking about problems, and different ways of solving them. None necessarily worse than the other (although mine is surely the best out of all the equal ones).
This is what I mean when I say it’s a craft. 🙂 Everyone has they way. It’s much like molding a sculpture, while it simultaneously also can be viewed simply as a tool for solving a problem, by the sole, isolated programmer.
@Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com it’s the same for me and i suspect that the way the down/upvotes for your comment have played out and that of @victorz@lemmy.world is indicative of the software engineering field’s proclivities of today.
my decade as a software engineer gave me the awareness that its most outspoken practitioners voice a viewpoint along the same vein as that @victorz@lemmy.world shared – as artisans working at their craft – and i think it lays bare their background and how they see the world and themselves in it.
my time in the field also gave me an anecdotal awareness of how popular the sentiment is despite an overwhelming majority not embracing it until influenced. in my later years in the field, several other engineers and i took it upon ourselves to formally train fresh graduates because we collectively became aware of the gaps between academia and the needs of our old-silicon employer.
i was the first to teach them because most were slated for operations roles and i was also the last because i was on the team responsible for new pushes to production. the other engineers and i agreed to this pattern because my decade+ of IT experience lent to a role more closely involved in day-to-day operations than my colleagues who did nothing other than software development.
for 6 years and without fail, the “students” at the first almost-week long bootcamp saw the work the same way i did – as ordinary technical work that’s skilled but not sacred or unique. after they spent the following almost-2-weeks with my colleagues and then returned to me for the final few days of company specific training, they began espousing this artisan perspective, the same as most of my colleagues had before them.
i shared this observation with the only other colleague that had a background and make up that was different than the others. she called herself an engineer like i did and she called my observation the “geek industrial complex”. she had been a software engineer since the 1990’s and told me about red hat’s “geek world” contest – a marketing facade based on the popular-at-the-time mtv show named “real world”. she said people calling themselves “artisans” or “craftsmen” instead of engineers was the same playbook: manufacturing a romantic identity to sell back to people who bought in, leading them to often gatekeep against others to prove their own authenticity. she said it was how they coped with being cogs while convincing themselves they were something more – a labor aristocracy that clocked in just like everyone else does.
i wasn’t sure what to make of it at first, but i started studying leftist politics not long afterwards and everything i’ve read & watched since then has reaffirmed to me that she was right.
Very interesting perspective, thank you for sharing that!
I don’t think it has anything to do with how I see the world and myself in it, in my case specifically. When I say coding is a craft, I base it solely on the fact that problem solving using code can happen in so many different ways, and there will be almost as many code styles and problem solving styles as there are coders.
I’ve seen it when reviewing as many other people’s code as I have. I have reviewed what must be thousands of student coding assignments over the decade or so I was in academia, and for each assignment, there was almost no hand-in that was the same, despite the sometimes extremely narrow problem scope. Were they identical, they were usually suspected of cheating or collaborating too closely, and when confronted, usually admitted as much.
And in my soon-to-be decade in the private sector I’ve seen so many styles as well, even with coding style guides in place. And not just style discrepancies, but just thinking about problems, and different ways of solving them. None necessarily worse than the other (although mine is surely the best out of all the equal ones).
This is what I mean when I say it’s a craft. 🙂 Everyone has they way. It’s much like molding a sculpture, while it simultaneously also can be viewed simply as a tool for solving a problem, by the sole, isolated programmer.