[Pinbenterjamin]

In our field, unknowns and chaos are unavoidable. This profession offers a lot to be cynical about.

Establishing clear lines of communication and trust is hard work. As hard as development. People are unpredictable and diverse. It's like writing a different language for every part of the application. The syntax you use to communicate between people changes.

As the world continues its descent into reliance on technology and software, more people are faced directly with generating requirements for developers to implement, and right now the gap between the two world is still rather large. The best way to help close those two worlds in, is not to point a finger at those around us and complain they aren't capable in this environment, it is to help build the bridge so that the person who is in your position next does not have to face those same realities.

[rdiddly]

Ha - I like how you call it a "descent." A healthy techno-skepticism.

[indigochill]

It's pretty applicable. And I don't mean just from a techno-skeptical perspective. At the dawn of personal computing, you basically had to be an electrical engineer to get a PC working. So you knew almost everything about your machine. Now, even highly skilled and experienced developers don't know nearly as much about their machine.

This introduces dark corners where bad actors can operate on levels that people either don't know how to monitor or don't even know exist (rootkits, etc.).

And it's not just that. Machine learning is increasingly being trusted to make decisions for us despite being the blackest of all boxes. Decisions like predictive policing (https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predict...) that have serious impact on people's lives.

I'm personally less skeptical of technology itself and more skeptical of unqualified people misusing technology (whether that's using machine learning to arrive at bogus conclusions, leaving personal webcams open on the internet, downloading fishy attachments, or anything else).

IMO, including some minimal technical education (like the technological equivalent of home ec) would be a fine start.

[rdiddly]

I hear you, but every successful technology, even if used correctly and competently, makes the human using it more capable with it, and less capable without it. So in a way it's always a descent. And of course "more capable" includes "more capable of screwing up" as you're basically saying.