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by yeukhon
3109 days ago
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Here is why working on your programming pet projects shouldn't become a metric. The Japanese bullet train was redesigned by observing how nature works: https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/11/9/16628106/biomimicry-des... "A moment of inspiration from engineer and birdwatcher Eiji Nakatsu changed all that." Nakatsu did not become a birdwatcher to become a great engineer. So if you want to become a great engineer you follow what you want to do with your free time. Also, I think people put too much emphasis on the degree of technicality over humanism. A unethical technical genius is not a great software engineer because there is no art in the engineering work. Great architects, chefs, and musicians view their work as arts with thoughts. |
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(1) Metrics. Metrics tend to destroy the sort of motivation that allows a "task to be done for its own sake", where you are capable of immersing yourself fully in the details of a situation without excluding any "secondary" information (with respect to the metric or super-goal). Mastery of a task comes in part from being familiar with the fullest extent of phenomena within a domain. Pleasure proxies mastery by creating immersion, and is common for a hobby.
A master physicist knows all of physics. A civil engineer knows enough to build bridges. Only one of these people I would trust to make be able to create a new method of building bridges that wasn't incremental, or was based on a novel theoretical insight.
[building bridges might not be the best example because it's an older domain with a lot of time to be refined]
(2) I don't see technicality as being the culprit so much as an overfocus on technology. The "art" comes from either the amount of /craft/ that is put into the use of the technology or the amount of /humanity/, that is, consideration and care for how the users will perceive and receive the technology in an interpersonal manner. You mention three domains where aesthetics count but I don't think a focus on the study of aesthetics is necessary for us to apply the concept of art. These things can be done on engineering's terms.