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I've never driven a Tesla. Doesn't mean I'm unaware of their existence or the roads I build have to be incompatible with them.


Apples to oranges. Roads are nowhere near as complex as Web APIs.


How about bridges, then?


I see your dedication to this topic. While I commend you on it, I don't think you're ready to have a fair discussion on it. This is a topic that, unlike Civil Engineering, has way too much complexity and nuance. We don't like it, and we all wish it were better organised and standardised and simpler and just ... generally not so fraught with frustration. But it is what it is, and it's not like you and I can settle this debate with pithy comparisons to random subfields of Civil Engineering.


Outside of nuclear rocket assisted brain surgery, nothing really compare to browser complexity.


... and this is why people think of tech folks as arrogant.


Does doing rocket assisted brain surgery sounds arrogant? It's a cry for help.

Software is infinitely more complex to civil engineering (this isn't a good thing). Because it can literally do almost anything.

In civil engineering you have a bridge from point A to point B over a river. Points are on such and such soil. It needs to support X amount of traffic and gets inspection/repair every Y days.

In software you have a bridge, but we also need it to launch a space shuttle, and it needs to work as an air ship. It goes from point A to point B but soil is periodically changed (sometimes it's diamond and sometimes gravel or marshmallow). Oh and river can sometimes turn to molten metal or solid oxygen.


Think of it however you'd like to. You're entitled to your opinion. But we're not saying these things from a place of arrogance.

I'm not claiming we're better that civil engineers, or that our job is harder. Maybe you're reading it that way, but I'm trying to assert that such a comparison cannot be made. It's neither easier nor harder, and it's both. The two endeavours are just not comparable.

Civil engineers work with real, physical, tangible things. Hardware, so to speak. We work with ... software. Soft. Ware. The modes are entirely different, and thus the universe of challenges. I wouldn't compare painting to songwriting, even if they're both art.

But if you go up to a painter and talk to them exclusively using songwriting analogies and when they tell you that doesn't make sense and you plug your fingers into your ears and yell "Arrogant!" in their face ... well, you're entitled to you opinions and apples are still not the same things as oranges.




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