you don't speak for me

boing boing linked to this

and it pissed me off
more than any ten of cory doctorow's tiresome rants about drm

the sort of thing i thought we were past
in the age where the recognition that the geeks are
the ones who get things done
is no longer a new thing

aren't we past the notion that
programmers are uniformly pasty and confined indoors
that mathematicians are maladjusted hermits
that physicists are hopeless with the ladies
that engineers are all of the above

seriously
even in an environment like rpi
a place
shockingly homogeneous to people not used to it
and i don't just mean gender
there were
[i assume still are]
more counterexamples to this
trite bullshit

let's have some fun with this

1
the star trek thing
loved the new movie
hated next generation even as some classmates loved it
but more relevant
mr. scott is an engineer in name only
engineering is about compromise
improvisation
doing more with less
and star trek style deus ex machina is just an admission that
you didn't know what the fuck you were doing

2
left to our own devices many of us might dress practically
comfortably
others of us have gotten so corporate
as to believe that khakis and a blue button-down shirt
are comfortable
i would prefer swift death

3
this is fucking retarded and i will not dignify it with a reply

4
i can't speak for everyone else without sounding like as much of a
moron
as the author
[who ironically claims to be an engineer]
but some of us crave simplicity instead of what he describes
not a special thing for every task
but one
satisfying
elegant tool
for the majority

5
this engineer is a busy one
people pay me for my expertise and time
i am more than content to pay others for theirs
i'm more than smart enough to change my car's oil
but that hour is worth the $5 increment it costs me
to get someone else to do it

6
it's no kind of revelation
but this is more or less true
although the ego factor
varies wildly

so what about the original point
why aren't there famous engineers
well
they seldom work alone
they specialize in making things that already work
work
and if they've done their job right
they've probably documented the heck
out of what they did
so when it works
it's not a surprise
it's not a miracle
it's just deeply nuanced routine

nuance and routine are hard for lazy writers
to make interesting for readers
even though many have
[try this for a start]

instead
lazy writers make insipid generalizations