Comment by travisgriggs
7 days ago
Can someone help me understand when this bifurcation happened. As a Mechanical Enginneer who worked their way through college doing software, and then... just kept going for the next 30 years, I find this increasingly role based demarcation difficult to understand/accept. I came out of an era where we called ourselves engineers, but we were designers too. And a whole lot of other things. And the mantra regardless of label, was to solve the right problem for the right people.
I feel like software creation in this decade is increasingly about the creation of beauracracies. Different roles. Different processes. More people than ever before. Everyone vying that their contribution is essential, and that others need to stay in their lanes. I miss the old days honestly. I told myself I would not be like this as I aged. I'm struggling to execute on that hope. :|
I often call them the D's of organizations. Doers, Deciders, Discussers. We seem to have less and less respect for the plight of the Doer, and more and more desire to legitimize the others in disproportionate amounts. Pournelle's Law I guess.
> Can someone help me understand when this bifurcation happened
The distinction is as old as art and design. If I had to pick modern moments that articulated it well I'd go with Arts and Crafts followed by Bauhaus.
> solve the right problem for the right people
Solving problems is the core of design and a design can be evaluated on the basis of how well it solves a problem. Whereas art is free to simply exist. Many works have elements of both, but if you hire someone to solve a problem and they believe their job is to make art then you'll both be disappointed.
I'm unsure what motivated the rest of your post though I can feel your frustration. I will say that bureaucracies and processes have been around for centuries, they just shift language every decade or so. There has also always been a tension between the people who Do and the people who Decide but both are necessary for a functional organization.
But doing away with that crap was what drew lots of old skool coders in in the first place. Myself included. Now I need 10x the resources to do anything compared to my Delphi 6 and PHP 3 days. It sucks.