Oct 21, 2026, 8:29 PM@gaditb Which points at another important thing: programming ain't special. *Every* engineering discipline is like this.
The price of civilization is eternal maintenance.
- Oct 21, 2026, 8:29 PM
Replies
- Oct 21, 2026, 8:30 PM
@gaditb (although it does make a difference that a CPU is one of the most complicated machines humans have ever constructed *and it doesn't do anything by itself*, you have to hook it up to multiple other things that *also* qualify as "one of the most complicated machines humans have ever constructed" to make it useful)
Oct 21, 2026, 8:42 PM@zwol The other difference is that programming as an engineering discipline has not yet come to face and account for the actual impact on people's lives we have, and take responsibility as an industry for failure and for accredidation.
(And like, other industries are at different points -- like, the difference between crash investigations in the airline industry and crash investigations in the railroad industry is a famous difference of proper responsibility -- but I think we're undeniably at the far back of the pack.)
(Even taking into account the "interviewing other-fields engineers and computer engineers to tell the differences" work that complicates this picture, that's still worthwhile to look for and into.)
- Oct 21, 2026, 8:32 PM
@gaditb [footnote: "The price of civilization is eternal maintenance" is a verbatim quote from somewhere in the middle of a web serial I read years ago in the depths of burnout and can no longer find. It wasn't a very good web serial except for that one line.]
- Oct 21, 2026, 8:37 PM
@zwol (I love love love finding mediocre- or bad- (or even just uneven-) -quality media and enjoying it as a just "but they CARED when making it, and I enjoy watching them care", and finding in one corner of it the one or two places where -- for this line, for this scene, for this moment -- OOH, that hits. beautifully, truely, deeply, passionately, small but as strongly as a piece of a critically-acclaimed work does. Just, accumulating those fragments of beauty.)