Man, you must hate those handymen who put up YouTube videos showing how to do basic home maintenance. A truly class-conscious handyman would insist that the homeowner hire them to replace a light switch.
How this is equivalent at all? The proper equivalence would be "You should be happy a random passerby decided to re-wire your home after watching a youtube tutorial and thank him accordingly".
There certainly exists a class of electricians who believe that homeowners shouldn't be changing a light switch, and jurisdictions exist where a permit is required to do so.
I have seen some homeowners who shouldn't own a screwdriver or a hammer try to do minor electrical work. It was not pretty.
I've often thought that it would make sense to have a DIY electrician's certificate, proving that you know how to do basic home wiring, such as outlets, switches, ceiling lamps, basic solar (DC and AC), installing new wire, load calculations, and connecting to breakers in a service panel
I have no problems pulling a permit and going through an electrical inspection.
In the Netherlands anyone may do the wiring of their house themselves but if it is a substantial modification (or an entire installation) a certified electrician has to sign off on it. They are not likely to stick their neck out for any funny business.
That said, I've seen plenty of work from experienced certified electricians that was complete garbage. Not just a few things, more than half their work.
Things like, they cut half way though the wire removing insulation. When you pull the socket out of the wall the wire breaks. So you have to strip it again but they also cut it to short so you have to pull a new wire into the tube. Then you discover the tube is a bunch of segments behind the wall or it has multiple sharp 90 degree corners and the wire wont move or the new wire wont go in. Then you have to open up the walls, new plaster, new paint, do you want one wall with wall paper that doesn't match or will you go for new wall paper for the entire house/floor? All because they did multiple terrible things.
I'm not an electrician, just a DIY enthusiast (and the parent commenter) - but in North American construction, romex in conduit is basically unheard of in residential builds - it's stapled to the framing during construction, so once you cut wire short, you've immediately put yourself in a pickle.
We use rigid 16 mm pvc conduit (bend with heat) with 2.5mm2 wires in brown(+) blue(-) yellow/green stripe(gnd) and 1.5mm2 black for switched wires.
Ideally you bend the pipe as little as possible and make the corners as smooth or as blunt as possible. If done properly you can later add extra wires. If not done properly you only get the illusion you can.
Here in the states, putting Romex in conduit is considered a code violation. You're supposed to use THHN wire in a conduit.
I wish professional electricians use pigtails and wago lever nuts instead of wire nuts. Working an old house, I've had to cut way too many wires almost too short just to add another neutral or ground.
I don’t think they implied Romex? Conduit is mandatory in multi-family construction here in San Francisco, but they just use armored cable, not romex in conduit.
Come on, are you really going to strawman "engineering should be inherently disqualifying" into "so people shouldn't DIY in their own home"? Please try a little bit harder.
I’m not strawmanning anything. I’m pointing out what I believe to be ridiculous gatekeeping. Software engineering isn’t some holy magic that must be kept from the masses.
I can go on YouTube and get step-by-step instructions on how to safely wire an entire house. In many jurisdictions I would even be allowed to do that.
I can get instructions on how to completely redo a bathroom, down to the studs and up through the waterproofing and tiling. I can get instructions on how to do foundation repair, which might be a bit much for me but can help me ask the right questions to keep the contractor I hired honest.
These are all examples of experts acting as “traitors” to their particular group. In reality, technology enables both specialization and despecialization. Some people try to cling to their specializations and cry “class warfare” when threatened.
Alright, I guess I'll take the bait. Not much else going on today anyway.
> I’m pointing out what I believe to be ridiculous gatekeeping.
I am not gatekeeping. I am stating that we collectively exist in a professional caste and that will go away or lose influence if you let it do so. Other professional castes do this exact same brain exercise and that is why they have protections in place.
> Some people try to cling to their specializations and cry “class warfare” when threatened.
I'll be blunt and just state that I am post money and not remotely threatened by this stuff anymore. I am observing that software engineering as a profession is blindly giving away a ridiculous amount of leverage in the world - in the form of dollars and influence, the value of their labor - and more crucially doing it to themselves.
I will be fine whichever way this shakes out, and I don't really have a dog in this fight short of having spent decent time in the OSS space and finding it sad what it is turning in to.
Your initial post on class solidarity was extremely reasonable (even if I disagreed with it - see my comment above) but to follow it up with a post describing castes in a non-negative light is wild.
In hindsight, the word "caste" is too heavily loaded and I should have chosen a different term. Sorry for the shit choice.
It's not meant to be taken negatively, and is purely a term that I was choosing to represent "hey, you all need to consider better coordinating/representing/holding the line as a group".
> I am stating that we collectively exist in a professional caste and that will go away or lose influence if you let it do so. Other professional castes do this exact same brain exercise and that is why they have protections in place.
I consider this mode of thinking selfish and anti-progress. It’s pretty much exactly what Americans decry about unions.
I support workers being compensated for their value; what I dislike are protectionism and ossification.
I am fortunate that software has paid me well to work on problems I am enthusiastic about solving. I understand that a lot of people on e.g. the Ford assembly line are not there because they want to make excellent cars, they’re there because they need a job. I acknowledge that I have no idea what it’s like to structure one’s life and priorities this way; it is just completely alien to me to align oneself with the task rather than the mission. And I believe that task-identification mindset is why we hear about resistance to electrification because EVs require fewer assembly steps, or Teamsters cutting power cables at trade shows if the vendor dares to plug in a TV themselves.
I’ll be blunt and say you certainly sounds like someone “post money” talking if castes and such. Glad you got your nut and do not care how it shakes out.
What is sad about oss? What is it turning into? I will say far before ai came in oss was a few arms deep in the techfluqncer culture where motivations were driven by gh stars and follow counts rather than a genuine interest. Or maybe what was a genuine interest became twisted as the culture changed.
Assuming you're being genuine (which I have a hard time believing because your argument is quite literally a strawman, please read the definition), you're missing the context entirely. You can't conflate small DIY projects done around the house with developing software that thousands of people and institutions rely on. By all means you can go and watch a video on software development, but that does not entitle you to expect that PRs you make will be accepted to any project other than the ones you control yourself.
Please re-read the specific comment I replied to. It was someone expressing indignation that a software engineer would accept “high-quality” PRs from a non-software engineer, accusing the poster of lacking “class consciousness.”
> I can go on YouTube and get step-by-step instructions on how to safely wire an entire house.
Sure, and I'd be comfortable doing that with my house. I wouldn't be comfortable with some random person off the street coming up and saying to me, "hey, I watched a bunch of YouTube videos about wiring; you should invite me in to rewire your house".
I would argue the result depends 90% on mentality. Experience only makes you work faster.
Fun conversation with a high end coder: ME: I would write it from scratch rather than introduce a dependency. It's not that I don't trust people but I just don't trust people to live up to the specific standards for the specific job. HIM: For what I cost no way I could justify that. ME: It looks like a circus this thing of yours. HIM: Keep the secret!