[perspectivep]

> The lack of respect is infuriating.

That's why I hate things like hackathons. We need people to think of us as engineers rather than tinkerers, and the labels we accept aren't helping.

[TheOtherHobbes]

It's more like lack of experience. The wonderful thing about engineering is that most people literally can't imagine how hard it is, and how complicated the systems they rely on are.

All they see is a lightswitch that works and a phone that runs apps and makes calls.

They don't know anything about distributing power across a national power grid while minimising losses and keeping phases synchronised, metallurgy, ceramics, plastics and organic chemistry, industrial injection moulding and machining, data compression and coding, compiler design, radio frequency and microwave circuit design, microprocessor manufacture, automated assembly, adaptive digital signal processing, optoelectronics and display technologies, networking protocols - and so on.

For them it all just works, even if the software is often a bit crap.

99% of the complexity is invisible, so they have no clue it's there - and you can't value something you don't know about.

[erikb]

Just had a discussion with a friend that we humans really have a hard time to understand the complexities of things we don't know. The less we know the more we think we know (and vice versa).

The only way I found to handle that is trying to be very careful when I feel 100% sure something is as I think it is. But sometimes you are so sure of yourself that you don't even realise that.