Comment by dcrazy
6 hours ago
Man, you must hate those handymen who put up YouTube videos showing how to do basic home maintenance. A truly class-conscious handyman would insist that the homeowner hire them to replace a light switch.
6 hours ago
Man, you must hate those handymen who put up YouTube videos showing how to do basic home maintenance. A truly class-conscious handyman would insist that the homeowner hire them to replace a light switch.
How this is equivalent at all? The proper equivalence would be "You should be happy a random passerby decided to re-wire your home after watching a youtube tutorial and thank him accordingly".
There certainly exists a class of electricians who believe that homeowners shouldn't be changing a light switch, and jurisdictions exist where a permit is required to do so.
I have seen some homeowners who shouldn't own a screwdriver or a hammer try to do minor electrical work. It was not pretty.
I've often thought that it would make sense to have a DIY electrician's certificate, proving that you know how to do basic home wiring, such as outlets, switches, ceiling lamps, basic solar (DC and AC), installing new wire, load calculations, and connecting to breakers in a service panel
I have no problems pulling a permit and going through an electrical inspection.
Come on, are you really going to strawman "engineering should be inherently disqualifying" into "so people shouldn't DIY in their own home"? Please try a little bit harder.
I’m not strawmanning anything. I’m pointing out what I believe to be ridiculous gatekeeping. Software engineering isn’t some holy magic that must be kept from the masses.
I can go on YouTube and get step-by-step instructions on how to safely wire an entire house. In many jurisdictions I would even be allowed to do that.
I can get instructions on how to completely redo a bathroom, down to the studs and up through the waterproofing and tiling. I can get instructions on how to do foundation repair, which might be a bit much for me but can help me ask the right questions to keep the contractor I hired honest.
These are all examples of experts acting as “traitors” to their particular group. In reality, technology enables both specialization and despecialization. Some people try to cling to their specializations and cry “class warfare” when threatened.
Alright, I guess I'll take the bait. Not much else going on today anyway.
> I’m pointing out what I believe to be ridiculous gatekeeping.
I am not gatekeeping. I am stating that we collectively exist in a professional caste and that will go away or lose influence if you let it do so. Other professional castes do this exact same brain exercise and that is why they have protections in place.
> Some people try to cling to their specializations and cry “class warfare” when threatened.
I'll be blunt and just state that I am post money and not remotely threatened by this stuff anymore. I am observing that software engineering as a profession is blindly giving away a ridiculous amount of leverage in the world - in the form of dollars and influence, the value of their labor - and more crucially doing it to themselves.
I will be fine whichever way this shakes out, and I don't really have a dog in this fight short of having spent decent time in the OSS space and finding it sad what it is turning in to.
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Assuming you're being genuine (which I have a hard time believing because your argument is quite literally a strawman, please read the definition), you're missing the context entirely. You can't conflate small DIY projects done around the house with developing software that thousands of people and institutions rely on. By all means you can go and watch a video on software development, but that does not entitle you to expect that PRs you make will be accepted to any project other than the ones you control yourself.
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