I guess they have always been an easy target in movies, etc.?
I have a feeling your dad could learn anything if given the right structure. Mechanics are underpaid, expected to continually learn on their time, provide $20,000-30,000 grand worth of tools; and the owner is the only one making a real living.
I would like to see them unionize. I sometimes think they could pull it off in the Bay Area, especially San Francisco.
> Kafka was rapidly promoted and his duties included processing and investigating compensation claims, writing reports, and handling appeals from businessmen who thought their firms had been placed in too high a risk category, which cost them more in insurance premiums.[41] He would compile and compose the annual report on the insurance institute for the several years he worked there.
And of course, Wallace Stevens was an insurance lawyer.
There are developers, then there are developers.
There are mechanics, then there are mechanics.
etc.
There some mechanics I know who are absolutely top-notch - they know their stuff, and have had a passion for it for years. Others I run in to at repair shops are really just... they have a job. That's it. They may stay, or move on to something else later, but they're just average.
And I see that in a lot of developers (probably moreso, as I have a more critical eye for that).
But I think it's probably that way in almost every profession - some are truly passionate, brilliant, dedicated, etc. And some folks just treat it as a job.
Getting good/great at programming means understanding more and abstract concepts in addition to features of the environment you are working in.
Most programming tasks, once an initial project is started/templated out, can be done by someone that is effective, while not being a "great" programmer. It's a trade off.
It was fun, too; much like debugging code with your hands. Okay, what evidence do I have to work with? Of these several hypothesises, which are the most likely? And, just like code, sometimes you spend the afternoon going down what you thought was the right path only to find out you're wrong.
As with software, there are hot shots that just seem wired for the task, and there are those that can merely competently do the job without screwing it up (and, like software, there are those few you don't want anywhere near your stuff). Just like software, I was one of those that fell in the middle. :-)
Tell ya what though, unlike software, I had very few bad days as an auto mechanic. Decent money, I enjoyed the work, and when the weather was nice we open the bay doors and you're practically working outside. Rarely did anyone second-guess my decisions (and when they did, it was to make my job easier so I don't do it the hard way), and I rarely had to convince anyone of my estimates as we had a big book that already estimated how long a competent mechanic should take to do the job.
One big difference is that incompetence is harder to hide as an auto mechanic. You're not going to be doing any copy-pasta from StackOverflow when you're an auto mechanic.
Smart? Eh, like anything, it's hit or miss. Since the repair bays are right next to each other, and you don't have to expend a lot of cycles thinking through hash table algorithms, there's plenty of talking. Mechanics are a reflection of the general population, some guys (and they were all guys back then; girls worked up front behind the desk) I knew could probably write philosophy books, others probably won't be moving to Microsoft to write kernel code any time soon.
In summary, the public underestimates the intelligence of just about everyone but themselves, so mechanics don't get a pass. Nor do the mechanics care about what you think, at least this one didn't. I was happy where I was at at the time, I didn't need anyone's approval. And the money was good.
Reminds me of reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
Seriously, it's a book that really spoke to me, and probably largely because of being both a mechanic and motorcyclist. So it's no coincidence if some of the stuff I write sounds like something out of ZAMM, because I'm probably just (poorly) paraphrasing something I read years ago, flavoring it some real-life experience.
That's an interesting comparison - why couldn't you use StackOverflow for mechanics. I don't know anything about cars other than they have generally have 4 wheels and use fuel but from the hardware work I've done on computers whenever I was troubleshooting stuff I would first look for symptoms then I would search and find random things to try on the internet. I don't see why this wouldn't apply to cars - people sharing their cases and being able find relevant ones could be a time saver.
Well, sonny, back then we had no easily-accessed Internet. :-) But there are sites much like SO, just not under one umbrella. For instance, for our BMW motorcycles, there are several web forums I can troll for answers. Our Scion xB has at least one or two sites where one can get help for mechanical questions. And, hell, there probably is an auto-related Stack Exchange site for all I know (a quick glance shows a bicycle-related one, so there's got to be one for cars.)
For pros, it's not really a question of "how do I change a headlight?" Any pro knows the basics involved that would apply to just about any car. The real question is usually "how the hell do I get to the screw holding that bracket?" or "I've got all of the visible fasteners out, and it still won't budge". For that, there used to be big bookshelves of shop manuals that are now replaced with DVDs.
Even if I'm billing out at my full sysadmin rate, the cost to me of replacing the window was dramatically cheaper than the $400 my local repair shop quoted me for a new window. and considering that I pay for car repair out of post-tax money, the difference is even more dramatic. (now, this is silicon valley prices, but the window was for a decade-old toyota sienna, so it's not luxury car in silicon valley prices)
Especially if you are willing to go with 'craftsman' level brands rather than 'snap-on' level brands,[1] tools are pretty cheap compared to what you pay for auto repair, even if you want things like air tools and compressors.
All that said, while youtube is great for figuring out how to do a thing, it's less great for troubleshooting; but I think the reason why things like stackoverflow/serverfault is so great for debugging is that our error messages are printed out in text that we can search on.
And yeah, I've got an ODB2 reader, and for those errors, the internet is awesome. (I replaced my oxygen sensor at the request of my odb2 reader a while back, and that was also easy, facilitated by a youtube video again.) - but for "my car is making a funny noise" kind of errors, it's hard to search for the problem without knowing the jargon, you know?
[1]for auto tools, I really don't see much difference between the craftsman level brands and the better brands. I suspect this has to do with my skill level; I am very solidly in the shade tree school here, and I'm not ashamed to get the damn thing towed to someone who really knows what they are doing if I get in over my head, and that does sometimes happen.
For screwdrivers and other things that you use to rack up or take apart computers, I have strong opinions, and am significantly less happy if I have to do the job with my 'backup screwdriver' - also, I can tell you the difference between a phillips, pozi-drive, and JIS drivers and become agitated when someone assembles an object with fastener heads that are more than one of those.
The difference is that you don't use the same wrench a dozen times a day, day in and day out. Same reason my home toolboxes don't have roller bearing drawers: I don't open the drawers a dozen times a day anymore, so it's a waste of money for me now.
As I said above, Craftsman is fine for the DIYer. It's the brand I frequently buy. I haven't talked to a Snap-On driver since I left the field.
yeah, that's kind of what I was trying to say with the bit about how I care very much about the tools for dealing with rackmount computers and how I have a favorite screwdriver. I didn't care about screwdrivers either until I started using them a lot. I would bet money that you are right and that if I worked on cars more, I would care more about getting a really nice set of automotive tools, but I don't work on cars that much, so I don't really understand how the really good tools are different from the merely "good enough" tools, because that comes with experience.
But my main point was that there are tools that are adequate for the shadetree mechanic that are cheap enough to more than pay for themselves after a single use in a shadetree level project. If you can afford to have your car fixed, you have the capital to buy adequate (maybe not really nice... but adequate) tools to get started with your automotive hobby or the beginning of your education as a mechanic.
I do imagine that like IT people, most, or at least a whole lot of mechanics start out as hobbyists. The two seem similar enough to me.
Sometimes I just need an explode diagram to see what I need to strip off to get to $PART_TO_REPLACE. Sometimes there are shop manuals online, or a dealer has parts diagrams that will do the job.
As for tools, buy what you need as you need it, not all at once. Start with a good set of metric box end wrenches, a ratchet and sockets, add from there as needed. Craftsman at Sears is a good compromise between quality and the eye-watering price of Snap-On (not that Snap-On isn't worth it if you do it all day).
That's what you get when our profession is distinctive for the lack of social skills and interest in organizing to protect our own interests. The country is not getting more friendly to people who know how to do things but don't know how to win favor with the government.
Am I correct getting this impression that what's being said is that auto mechanic work is somehow not "brain work"? Because for solving a lot of car problems it takes brains. If you're good at troubleshooting car problems, you will actually probably be good at programming.
Programming, and especially software architecture, tends to be more abstract thinking.
FWIW, the Kolbe test methodology [1] has a good way of quantifying this sort of natural aptitude. 90% of programmers I know who have taken the test [2] are very good at abstract thinking, and not as good at the physical kind.
[1] kolbe.com
[2] Maybe 2 dozen programmers. So, not a huge sample, but enough to see a trend.
There might be a bit of 3d thinking in figuring out how to, say, measure that in location X of the engine there is current Y, but it's not like you can figure out you have to check the current in that spot without having a clear mental picture of what is going on.
Not to mention remembering that car model X tends to develop fault Y which sometimes causes observable behavior Z, which can be identified by checking A, B, C etc. etc. seems very similar to software engineering to me.
> switching careers extended his neural plasticity considerably
I find this very interesting & uplifting. Would you be comfortable sharing more on what motivated him to switch careers at that age and your general observations throughout the process. I'm perhaps your age but I've experienced switching careers significantly is like hitting F5 in your life, or like a complete system re-install. Everything feels fresh & new. You feel energized to learn a lot of new concepts. However, it's usually very difficult to convince someone who's 60+ to learn to code. Usually people are intimidated by programming if they've only interacted with a browser for most of their lives.
Beyond that, the self-starter is often a safer bet than a fresh college grad.
I've spent the bulk of my life self-employed and he realized it wasn't as scary as it looks from the outside.
It starts your career in debug mode ?
Over the years he grew tired of his job, he went into management and that was just worse. He said he missed the problem solving of the day to day mechanic job. My mom had went back to school at 40 to get a degree in art and was having a lot of fun with computer graphics and over the years my Dad would tease her about paying the bills.
One particularly hard day my Dad handed his keys to his boss and walked out of the shop, never to look back. He ran into a project to help his church with their headquarters website and he said "It can't be any harder than working on a 318". And off they went, from that one to the next, now my mom makes eReader magazines and my dad sits and bashes away at sites and debugs problems.
One time he tried to tell me how smart I was and I laughed, I told him I've watched him tear a car down to the studs and find one broken part and put it back together from memory. Never looking at a manual, reading diagrams or even pausing to guess where one of a thousand parts went. He's brilliant, he taught me to break problems down to single variables, test and iterate. Clearly he's way smarter than I am, I'm just trying to mimic him. :-)