[shadowgovt]

The big advantage to software engineering is we deal in abstractions. I liken it to building castles in the clouds; everything down to the foundation is reshapeable.

... the big disadvantage to software engineering is we deal in abstractions. Everything down to the foundation moves.

http://thecodelesscode.com/case/154

[xkcd-sucks]

Also, software is right now primarily a means of codifying human thought, which means it embodies the whole spectrum of human sanity and competence

[hathawsh]

That deep thought seems especially appropriate for XKCD, yet your username curiously suggests you would disagree.

[lostlogin]

> I liken it to building castles in the clouds

You’re very positive. When you see a developer dealing with a bug, it seems more like they are dealing with a turd palace floating in a sewer.

[qup]

Turds are shapeable, too. Hard to polish, I've heard.

But you control the poopy stack.

[cgriswald]

> [Turds are] hard to polish, I've heard.

Mythbusters did it:

> Adam and Jamie first visited the zoo to obtain a variety of feces to try to polish. Poop collected, they tried to pick the most polishable candidates, and then baked them to remove the moisture. Adam tried to shine his poop with a buffing wheel, while Jamie's tactic of applying a furniture polish caused a philosophical disagreement between the two. Adam eventually brought in an outside expert to teach them dorodango, a Japanese art form that allows a practitioner to apply a shine to dirt using nothing but water and physical effort. Applying this technique, Adam and Jamie were both able to polish balls of poop without using any foreign materials as judged by a gloss meter, exceeding a standard of 70 gloss units for high gloss.[0]

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2008_season)#Epis... (Section: You Can't Polish Poop)