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by JumpCrisscross 545 days ago
> engineers have the hardest time working with law because they expect things to be logical

This sounds like something a lawyer would say to a client who wants to think that. Law and coding have remarkable parallels.

2 comments

To some extent, but in my experience developers struggle to understand that ultimately, the law is interpreted by humans, instead of a strict rule based system. I understand this frustration, to be clear, but this distinction is obvious.
> in my experience developers struggle to understand that ultimately, the law is interpreted by humans, instead of a strict rule based system

True. But this isn’t because someone is more logical. Honestly, that was a great line by a lawyer who probably wanted to focus on the case and not bill hours for a philosophy of law discussion.

The parallels are pretty superficial. The process is similar to theologians arguing scripture or maybe querying a low-grade LLM.
> parallels are pretty superficial

Not really. In particular, they’re both professions filled with people who have egos the size of planets. I can just as easily see a surgeon telling a lawyer that the law is logical, being designed by man, in a way the human body is not just to get them to shut the hell up with broad questions about human anatomy during a surgical consult.

(The actual parallel is they both deal with constructed languages. High-level languages are full of hacks and quirks and high-octane stupid it, just like the law.)