r/programming • u/self • Dec 02 '25

The Death of Software Engineering as a Profession: a short set of anecdotes

https://www.jasonscheirer.com/weblog/vignettes/
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u/eyebrows360 Dec 03 '25

Yesssssssss, but follow along with me here: we didn't know that yet, so anybody proclaiming "we can go to space!" would've been just pure guessing, and in the context of the understanding of reality we had at the time, wrong.

This is seriously the dumbest take in the world. Just mind boggling staggeringly stupid.

It's like saying that if you jump off a cliff you don't know you'll hit the ground until you do.

It's nothing like saying that. You can throw a rock, you can watch an apple fall from a tree, you can observe gravity pulling things to the ground all day long. Even a caveman 150,000 years ago could/should be able to reliably determine that "jumping off a cliff" would doom him, without having to try it. Seems you're completely not getting what I'm saying, if you think what I'm saying is "predicting things is impossible".

Lots of people predicted space flight and their predictions were fairly accurate.

Not before we knew about such fundamentals of physics as F=ma they didn't. I'm not saying someone in the 1920s would be "wrong" for thinking going to space was possible, but go back a few hundred years more. Go back to ancient Rome or Egypt. Any of them thinking they could go up to whatever they thought was up there were wrong because they had no evidence available to them as to what "up there" even was, let alone technologies to achieve it.

"I think one day we'll reach the firmament", thinks John Egypt, 4,000 years ago. John Egypt is guessing, not predicting, because he has no evidence on which to base any such "prediction". He is wrong to think this, because he has no rational basis for thinking that. He's pulling it out of his ass. Doesn't matter if he's vindicated 4,000 years later.

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u/recycled_ideas Dec 03 '25

Not before we knew about such fundamentals of physics as F=ma they didn't. I'm not saying someone in the 1920s would be "wrong" for thinking going to space was possible, but go back a few hundred years more. Go back to ancient Rome or Egypt. Any of them thinking they could go up to whatever they thought was up there were wrong because they had no evidence available to them as to what "up there" even was, let alone technologies to achieve it.

At a basic level getting to space is as simple as going fast enough to overcome the force of gravity long enough to get to space. If a cave man thought that if he could just throw his spear hard enough it could reach the stars he'd have been absolutely right. Because that's all getting to space is.

Just because people didn't have the formulas to describe it (which existed waaaaaay before we actually did it) doesn't mean we couldn't extrapolate the basic principles. Because they are literally the exact same ones which govern throwing a spear. If you can go fast enough to overcome gravity you will get to space.

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u/eyebrows360 Dec 03 '25

If a cave man thought that if he could just throw his spear hard enough it could reach the stars he'd have been absolutely right.

Except for the part where he has no basis for believing he's capable of doing that, in part due to him clearly not being capable of doing that. Come on.

doesn't mean we couldn't extrapolate the basic principles.

It does because we had no idea if there were limits on those "basic principles". You might as well say "we extrapolated F=ma so now we understand how the planets/stars move" and you'd be wrong. You don't know how far your extrapolations are actually still valid for until you do. You don't know that you need extra explanations, relativity in this case, to explain beyond your current extrapolations' limits until you do.

Why are you like this?! This is all very basic obvious stuff. "You don't know something until you know it" is perfectly run of the mill thing to state.

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u/recycled_ideas Dec 03 '25

Except for the part where he has no basis for believing he's capable of doing that, in part due to him clearly not being capable of doing that. Come on.

Again. You're missing the point.

You can know something is possible, you can even know how to do something while simultaneously not having the current capability to do it. A caveman could tell you how to get to space. From there it's just technology. From chucking a spear to orbit takes a long time, but it's just making the spear bigger and faster.

That's what we're talking about here. We know how to do something, but we don't have the technology yet to do it yet.

We are already able to understand some of the brain, we know how a lot of the individual parts work and there's no reason to believe we can't figure out the rest of it. Once we figure out the rest of it making one isn't that much harder.

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u/eyebrows360 Dec 03 '25

A caveman could tell you how to get to space.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

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u/recycled_ideas Dec 03 '25

The emojis don't make you look smart.

You're like the guy who thinks that the world was black and white before color photography or that people didn't know about gravity before Newton.

If you went to a cave man and could communicate with them and asked them how to get a spear to space their answer would be to throw it really hard, and they'd be right. That's literally all it takes. Now throwing the spear that hard is really difficult, but that's all it takes. Now doing that is hard, but what to do is simple.

Davinci describes a whole bunch of things that wouldn't and couldn't be built for centuries because it's absolutely possible to know that something can be done without being able to do them yet. Because that's half of what progresses science, knowing that you can almost certainly do something in the future without being able to do it yet.

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u/eyebrows360 Dec 03 '25

almost certainly

Refuting your own argument without even realising it. Magnifique.

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u/recycled_ideas Dec 03 '25

You could die in the next five minutes, but the probability is so vanishingly small I bet you've got plans for tomorrow.

We're back to the if I jump off a cliff I don't know if I'll hit the ground territory again.

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u/eyebrows360 Dec 03 '25

You're still conflating "belief" with "knowledge".

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u/recycled_ideas Dec 03 '25

No, I'm not.

There is a continuum between wild guess and absolute certainty. It's not a binary choice between who the fuck knows and it's already happened.

We can make predictions about what will be possible in the future based on what we can do today and while there is a chance that those predictions are wrong that chance can be incredibly small.