New Essay: Are We Really Engineers?
Are We Really Engineers?
It's finally ready! Part one of the Crossover Project covers what inspired me to do this all, what makes engineering "engineering", and whether we fit into that role. Check it out here!. The next essay will be out Wednesday and the final essay on Friday.
I warned last week that these might not be "contentful" posts and unfortunately that's looking to be the case. In addition to everything else I got going on, I've decided to rewrite the third essay from scratch. It was always the weakest of the three, and on Saturday I finally put my finger on why: the tone was completely wrong. Here's an example snippet:
As much as we try, many of the crossovers felt that they "cared less" about the software they produced than about the things they built. It's easier to wave off a frustrating bug with "oh, that's just computers being bad" as opposed to "we did something wrong". It's easier to ignore performance issues by saying "computers are fast" and not observe how it frustrates the people who use it.
First sentence isn't too bad, it establishes the claim. Then comes an example of what I mean, which is instructive. It gives the reader a reference point for what I mean by "cared less". The problem is the second example, which is instructive in the exact same way. It isn't illuminating the idea at all, it's emphasizing the idea. It's subtly yelling "this is important and you should pay attention to it." Which, given the context, means I'm now making a moral judgment about the field. It might seem like a small thing, but the entire entire essay was filled with small things that give it a heavy-handed sermon tone. Fixing most of them isn't as easy as that example, which I can fix by cutting the third sentence. It'll take a lot more work to clean up.
Then, while cleaning up, I realized that I wasn't happy with my analysis in that essay, so I need to rewrite that, too. I'm like 80% done with the new version and don't see a problem with getting it ready by Friday, but that's time I can't spend on writing fun essays for the newsletter. So, uh, enjoy the first essay and I'll see you on Wednesday!
If you're reading this on the web, you can subscribe here. Updates are once a week. My main website is here.
My new book, Logic for Programmers, is now in early access! Get it here.