[john01dav]

> Honestly it’s hard to refute the fact that we need roads and houses more than we need cat videos.

Software does more than cat videos.

Examples that may be relevant:

- CAD and simulation tools that physical world engineers use

- telecommunications (not just programmers, but programmers are vital for the current ultra-cheap generation)

- CT and MRI data processing

- alphafold

- scheduling systems for universities and other schools (makes education more scalable)

- infrastructure/systems programming (OS, web browser, etc.)

Furthermore, no one would claim that civil engineering is useless just because a certain class of billionaires liked to hire them to design silly structures. So, the prevalence of the less useful things speaks more to priorities as a society than anything about software engineering itself

[btschaegg]

Your right, as are your examples, but I want to point out an interesting thing about your examples :)

> - CT and MRI data processing

> - scheduling systems for universities and other schools (makes education more scalable)

Those two read as if they are of different urgency (#1: whoever needs it urgently is at risk of dying, schedules for "non-urgent" cases will be affected for months, turning many into urgent cases; #2: the education systems will suffer, but it only gets dire after multiple days), until you realize that #2 also applies to e.g. hospitals.

Medicine at scale is already barely scraping by as it is (see: overworked staff etc. etc.), but disrupt the internal IT working of hospitals and the indirect body count will rise fast.

[rTX5CMRXIfFG]

Conveniently, those are the subdomains of the tech industry that require a deep understanding of CS theory (eg embedded systems) and DS&A, and yet whenever the subject of Leetcode comes up on HN, software “engineers” swoop in to argue how useless those are as a whole to 90% of the software being built in the world today…

Which, really, implies that 90% of people in this industry work in bullshit jobs that don’t require real engineering skills. You could even spout any BS about architecture in Medium.com and then asked to speak in a conference if it gets enough views.

[AlotOfReading]

How does embedded require deep understanding of CS? I work on embedded systems (safety critical no less) and while I can point out how they're actually distributed systems or x theorem is applicable all day, my coworkers don't actually need that info to do their jobs.

C and the various C++ subsets called "C with templates" would be much less common than they are if "deep understandings of CS and DS&A" were required in day to day work.

[hiyfsch]

I do realize this and the cat video mention was really me being facetious.

And honestly software engineers don’t need roads anyway working a tough four-day work week with long commute into the basement.

Jokes aside, innovation comes at a price. Every great thing will be turned into a weapon so just wait until the alpha-fold mutants start crawling out of a nearby sewage treatment plant.