
Being a programmer will make me a better doctor - chmaynard
https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2020/03/18/why-being-a-programmer-will-make-me-a-better-doctor/
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jdsully
The thing I've learned dealing with professionals in other fields is that they
just don't care as much as you do. The economics of their profession simply
don't allow it.

In software if you spend 8 hours fixing a bug that bug will be fixed for all
future users of your software. Someone spending 8 hours to diagnose a medical
condition will surely be meaningful to you but won't help the rest of the
people in the waiting room. Further most people do not have exotic illnesses
or needs so rarely is such detailed diagnosis necessary.

If you want someone to fix your car right rather than just replace random
parts, or to give you detailed medical attention be prepared to search a long
time to find someone willing to do so.

~~~
ken
It must depend on the industry. My experience is the opposite.

I've had programming jobs where every single day consisted of me running into
a bug and wanting to fix it, and my manager saying there's no ROI in that and
I need to add new features instead like The Roadmap says.

After switching to the physical world, there's definitely an understanding
that while we shouldn't be slow, we should take as long as needed to do the
job right. If we screw up, people could die. As they say: "OSHA regulations
are written in blood."

~~~
perl4ever
What about your experience with medical professionals, mechanics, etc.? It's
all relative.

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monksy
This is one of the frustrating things about what I have when I go to the
doctor.

As a developer, I generally want a lot of information in order to pose
theories about what is going wrong. They always seem really annoyed by this.

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apl
Mainly because it is genuinely exhausting for any medical practitioner. That
lots of patients "enjoy" googling symptoms and coming up with far-fetched
self-diagnoses is a given. But couple that with the perceived intellectual
superiority of (software) engineers and you get a recipe for disaster. It's
the equivalent of a doctor leaning over your shoulder while you're coding and
telling you to remove random keywords.

~~~
fossuser
Yeah I don't buy this.

Like any field I think there is a spectrum of quality and there are some
really great doctors that know a lot, some really bad ones, and a lot of
mediocre ones.

I've had a doctor (in the bay area) tell me that I should smoke a cigarette
instead of having coffee if I'm having trouble sleeping, but want to keep
working on something. Another talk positively about the butter coffee guy. I
think the main reason they don't talk about a lot of options is probably time
constraint and the common case being right most of the time. This means if
you're actually not a common case you're probably better off investing your
own time to try and figure things out too.

I like this article though, I think there is some similarity of style in
troubleshooting software and disease diagnosis (just very different things to
reason about).

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tpfour
I have family who are MDs and I have been working with MDs for over 5 years. I
have always felt the same, but usually MDs don't agree that much - feeling
special is part of the meme I guess.

I do feel, however, that the converse would not work as well: most MDs I met
do not practice the "abstract" thinking that is required to be a successful
programmer. But that's just my experience.

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cabernal
They sound more akin to kernel programmers.

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bryanrasmussen
I don't think most programmers I know would have a very winning bedside
manner.

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save_ferris
Neither have many doctors I've interacted with. The God-complexes in some of
those people is just incredible.

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bryanrasmussen
I'm just saying - poor bedside manner is a known problem, work on improving
that, not bringing in another discipline that for some reason or other seems
to have problems with sociability.

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hashmymustache
Eh, as a doctor with an engineering background who does a lot of programming
projects on the side and feels confident in both roles, they’re very different
skill sets and I wouldn’t say it makes me a better doctor. If you go into a
non-patient facing area like radiology or pathogy you can leverage it into
improved toolchains with AI assistance, but you also don’t have to be a
programmer to incorporate technology into your practice.

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smabie
"Based on the patient's past history of seasonal allergies and the high pollen
count that day, most signs seemed to indicate that there was nothing to worry
about. But--in order to rule out the unlikely "edge case" that the patient had
contracted an acute viral infection that could become serious when his immune
system was suppressed by chemotherapy--my advisor made sure to run tests for
several common bugs before starting treatment."

And that's the problem: thinking like this as a programmer is cheap and fast;
as a doctor it is slow and _very_ expensive. I for one would prefer a very
cheap doctor that didn't think like this most of the time. Unfortunately,
massive malpractice settlements will always hinder the goal of cheap
healthcare.

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choeger
The huge, and frustrating, difference is that software is (almost always)
deterministic and (in principle) can be fully understood. With enough time and
money, I am positive that I can fix _any_ bug you throw at me. Human illness
on the other hand sadly often leaves one without a cure.

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booleandilemma
Another example of the “everyone should learn to code” frenzy.

~~~
keenmaster
Programming, like spoken language, is one way to express yourself. A lot of
value is lost because otherwise apt people, with profound skill or potential
in a given vertical like medicine, cannot express themselves in digital terms.
Moreover, non-technical people use Excel in amazing ways. It would be better
if they knew how to program. The volume and distribution of technical labor is
becoming more and more of a bottleneck to innovation. Every year that we don’t
systematically introduce people to programming is another year where we
forsake large amounts of innovation, and the economic value lost compounds,
just like investments compound. There must be a large national effort to
introduce young people and adults to programming.

~~~
salawat
There is a curse there though.

I've found fluency with how the computer actually works creates a great deal
of friction with regards to trying to communicate with other people.

I'm so tuned to there always being an underlying cause that even my day to day
communication takes on aspects of subconscious Neuro- linguistic programming;
I end up trying to constantly tease apart or divine the nature of the
underlying semantic/experiential construction of relatively high level
communication done with a new person. It's gotten so bad, I can't really
comfortably engage in small talk, because to me, it feels like I'm fuzzing the
other person and being fuzzed by them in return to the point I end up getting
frustrated at the complete failure to set up meaningful communication.

What this ends up looking like, is that with someone I _know_ I can get into
high throughput, deep conversations. If I don't know someone though, I end up
having to noodle around and pry to desperately scrabble together enough
information to put forth a credible attempt at meaningful communication where
we both come out saying the same thing about the same thing to a high enough
degree of confidence that I"m comfortable we formed a shared understanding.

Also, any person that outright frustrates that calibration phase, or
demonstrates excessive volatility in terms of being able to reliably recall
things (see compulsive deceivers/gaslighters/liars) quickly finds themselves
on a low priority tier for further communication in many instances. I don't
like doing that, but every time I relent in the practice, I tend to get hurt.

~~~
keenmaster
Let's say, arbitrarily, that you automatically connect with 20% of people, 50%
of people take some work, and the other 20% aren't worth it.

The 20% that aren't worth it can be further split into people who are very
different from yourself, wallflowers, and antisocial individuals. If you are
not eager to please, you will identify the last 20% easily. The trick, though,
is that you can't automatically dismiss them. You must assess their importance
to work or personal goals, and tread lightly if they are important. With the
50% who take some work, I've found that de facto talking to them like we're
already friends helps unlock great conversations. I consistently take the
small risk of seeming eccentric in order to get past small talk in my first
conversation with strangers. I don't even do that to form lasting friendships.
It allows me to make "temporary friends" wherever I go, making for a more
pleasant day if nothing else. It also helps me have a stronger sense of
identity. I feel more "generic" when I talk about generic things.

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ken
Replace "programmer" and "doctor" with almost any other professions and it
would be just as true. Strategies like "Break problems into sub-problems" is
in no way specific to these fields. You might as well say "Being a carpenter
will make me a better CEO", and for exactly the same reasons.

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CyberFonic
I presume that you mean "medical" doctor. I also presume that this is a
hypothetical statement. You have not completed your medical training.

Would be very interesting to read about your experiences once you have become
a doctor and then putting the two professional experiences into relative
context.

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alephnan
Whatever happened to Barack Obama learning how to code?

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pvaldes
... but a worst surgeon. Too much of nintendonitis and you are out of the
game.

