Software engineer escapism: going back to reality
I just read Have taken up farming and I can’t help but gaze into nothing and think about what it is about software that seems to give many people the same symptoms.
Here are some of my thoughts and musings.
Software does not exist
I found software engineers are often creative people that love building things.
I remember thinking gratefully about how lucky I am, as a software engineer, being able to take my whole ’lab’ in a backpack. A few kilos worth of electronics allows me to experiment with very nearly whatever I want, wherever I want.
Immagine mechanical engineers, with their lathes, saws, mills. Just the cost of purchasing entry level tooling is a considerable barrier, not to mention that you need phisical space to put them in. I think mechanical engineering is very cool, but I will take the convenience of software, please and thank you.
But after many years, I think this comes with a price: the stuff you sweat and puzzle and work hard at building does not ‘really exist’. You can’t touch your cool sorting algos, and even your graphical interfaces only get you so far on the scale of the feeling of “I made this”.
Forge a nail, plane a board, build a chair. Even the simplest of artisanal endevours has brought a huge sense of satisfaction to me. The disparity seems disproportionate. Maybe it is just that I am not that into software? I love coding, I love making “the pixels on the screen light up a little different”, but I can’t help but think, compared to working with ones hands in addition to ones brains, something is missing.
Something in my brain does not feel like I really am building something. I still don’t know what to do about that, considering software is all I know how to do.
Dead end dev, indeed.