Comment by hinkley
7 months ago
We are really only about 60 years old as a proper profession, and we seem to be trailing behind doctors for professionalism and standard of care by about 100 years.
I don’t know what will turn out to be our penicillin, or our Joseph Lister, but in 1960 the former is something that didn’t exist when older doctors were in school, and latter had only been dead for fifty years. It may not have happened for us yet.
This is a super important point that I don't think a lot of people fully recognize. Medicine is a super interesting comparison because you honestly don't need to go all that far back to find some pretty egregious examples of doctors making things much worse due to ignorance or incompetence. My favorite example of this is the assassination of President Garfield, who most likely died not to the bullet wound itself but from the doctors rummaging around to try to find the bullet with unsanitized hands, causing infection and damaging organs...on the wrong side of his body[1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_James_A._Garf...
On the topic of professions: Joseph Lister was a surgeon. Modern surgery (which I define as surgery aided by anesthesia) is a relatively recent discipline dating to the early 19th century. The introduction of anesthesia made lengthy and intricate operations possible but also ushered in novel problems and complications. Surgery as a field had to learn tough lessons over time.
He was known more for antiseptics but the biggest surgery moment for me will always be “using soap” and I wonder what the software equivalent is.
Like I said we are still young, so it feels sort of arrogant saying we have figured something out when I know how many things are industry standard now that almost resulted in shouting matches trying to get done even 20 years ago. Maybe our soap moment is coming up ten years from now.
But I suspect automated testing may be the wash your hands, because it represents a sort of hygiene that “we” used to just say fuck it or make a minimal effort.