[mathattack]

I think this quote is magic, "Software engineering is a constant battle against uncertainty – uncertainty about your specs, uncertainty about your implementation, uncertainty about your dependencies, and uncertainty about your inputs."

Engineering is about handling what goes wrong, not what goes right. It's about handling the errors, changes, misuse, etc. It isn't about the techniques per say, as much as the mindset of living in an imperfect world.

[Edit: Fixed a typo.]

[confluence]

Indeed, which is why I like to think of engineering as a game of hyper-dimensional whack-a-mole [1].

There are a certain series of things you have to hit in a fairly hyper-dimensional world, dodging constraints, hurdling uncertainty and taking risk in your stride as you struggle to make products that work, delight consumers and make bank.

It's like a complex and exquisite ballet really, with suppliers, manufacturers, producers and designers all coming together to make extraordinary products that astonish the world.

Ah, I love engineering.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4238984

> designing a rocket engine is a massive game of high dimensional parameter whack-a-mole, it's very difficult to get a passable configuration without a lot of iteration and forwards-backwards passes