To this day, the best engineers I work with are farm people. I think it's because they grow up having to get shit done every day and when that tractor breaks down, you've gotta find a solution or risk falling way behind.
SmarterEveryDay has glowing accolades for farmers [1]. Similarly, the highly-constrained Cubans are notorious matter hackers [2]. My grandfather, and Italian peasant, had the same MacGuyverish attitude towards making stuff keep running long past the point most Americans would have chucked it.
I think all software devs should spend some time on a farm. Great for inspiring simple yet clever "shipped is better than perfect" style solutions. Manual labor is also great for Sitatdeskitis.
"I think all software devs should spend some time on a farm. "
I think a lot of devs think they are the only people doing innovative work. But when you look around there are clever solutions everywhere. When I worked closer to metal workshops I was always amazed what stuff people there had come up with to do their job.
> SmarterEveryDay has glowing accolades for farmers [1].
Seems weird to use a video by SmarterEveryDay as a reference to back up the statement that farmers give accolades to SmarterEveryDay. Who are these farmers who are watching youtube and saying SmarterEveryDay is so great? I'm sure they exist, but that link doesn't seem to justitify that.
> I think all software devs should spend some time on a farm
Any office worker should have the experience how it is to not work in a office. In fact, everyone should try to have as diverse experience as possible, in order to learn from each angle and perspective and apply the knowledge in other angles and perspectives.
One way which can be farm work, but don't limit yourself to just that, lots of other interesting professions.
No doubt in part because of brain training from tinkering and "hacking" with physical, moderately technical equipment.
I feel I've gained similar experience from turning wrenches on personal vehicles since I was a teenager. It's a great activity that teaches discipline and seemingly exercises a certain creative, technical, and systems oriented type of thinking, which is very similar to coding, albeit much less cognitively demanding.
I agree, but I also think that the best engineers I work with are not the best inventors. Good engineers who get distracted and fall behind, preferring to optimize or analyze a problem that's been solved well enough to get shit done make much better inventors.
If Eli Whitney had instead built a marginally better set of brushes for slaves to work with and gone on with his day, the story of the cotton gin would be very different.
About mechanical design - I remember in university noticing how some folks would design things that would be very difficult to construct, where folks who already knew how things were made would do much better. It seems like there's something to having early exposure to shop-stuff, and tooling per capita is bound to be higher in rural areas.