[vagrantJin]

> I saw someone else talking about Rust, but I don't think that's what would happen in such a world.

I agree.

Let's not use tools as a crutch. Roman engineers built bridges that are still standing today with little to no maintenance. There's no indication that those structures are going to fail anytime soon either. I think we can agree that their tooling was worse than our current bridge building tools.

> I mean like Real Engineering fields. What we do in software is not real engineering, not even close. That has pros and cons.

So the word engineer is probably loaded if not dated, a throwback to engineering's boom in the 19th and early 20th century. No idea why we still use it since software is more like math than anything else. Computer scientist just never stuck.

[denton-scratch]

> Roman engineers built bridges that are still standing today

Roman engineers didn't understand the principles of civil engineering; I'm sure they built a lot of stuff that fell down (survivorship bias). So they started massively over-engineering their structures ("moar rocks!")

[vagrantJin]

> I'm sure they built a lot of stuff that fell down

Survivorship bias is the favourite catchphrase for HN these last few years.

I think you overestimate the importance of academic theory over practicality.

"Moar rocks" is a perfectly reasonable way ro fortify a structure. Because 1000 years from now engineers will be wondering how any of our stuff survived ("moar cement and steel rods!")

So yeah, I have a healthy respect for practicality.