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Comment by mechanical_fish | Hacker News Reader

It's like maintaining a skyscraper built out of Tinker Toys.

What I wonder is: Does the following sentence run through the head of every expert in every field?

Man, I really shouldn't be getting paid for this. Any idiot could [do X].

It certainly felt true of most of my day-to-day work in graduate semiconductor electronics. It felt true of a lot of biology research. My conclusion is that there are a mere handful of days in your career when you will have to do something so hard that you will feel smart about it. But most of your career as an expert will be spent doing stuff that you know so well that it's kind of routine, even if it is totally esoteric stuff that only you know how to do.

Feynman said it well when he teased the mathematicians: "Mathematicians can only prove trivial theorems, because any theorem, once proved, is immediately seen to be trivial."

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Man, I really shouldn't be getting paid for this. Any idiot could [do X].

Another variation: what I do is not easy but every person practicing in my field can do this just as well as I can.

I worked very hard for many years to master my craft and always felt deficient along the way because the individual pieces seemed so daunting as I encountered and dealt with them. Not daunting in the sense of insurmountable. Just difficult. Long hours, Lots of sweating it out to get a given project done, one step at a time.

Nothing new here. Everyone who works hard to try to excel in his field goes through it.

It took me 10 years into my career to realize that many in my field (law) were not like me but contented themselves with cutting corners or otherwise coasting along while seeking to avoid the hard challenges.

Doing something right, and learning to do so consistently, is hard in any complex field. It does seem easy once you have mastered the difficulties but not that many are willing to do what it takes to get there. People are all too often content with mediocrity.

"It took me 10 years into my career to realize that many in my field (law) were not like me but contented themselves with cutting corners or otherwise coasting along while seeking to avoid the hard challenges."

I remember going through that moment. It puts the quantity of "best practices" chatter into perspective. People say this stuff over and over because it seems so widely ignored.

"It's like maintaining a skyscraper built out of Tinker Toys."

Actually, it's like maintaining a skyscraper built from steel, concrete and glass integrated with complex HVAC, plumbing, electrical and elevator systems.

Two different development processes, two different outcomes. And unlike other 'construction'-type businesses, in software we have many different development processes.

This is also true. But it's a question of levels of abstraction. The skyscraper is built out of (in part) a plumbing system, the plumbing system is built (in part) out of pipes, and assembling pipes is like assembling Tinker Toys. Which is why we give a five-year-old aspiring plumber a set of Tinker Toys to learn with. [1]

But this is only a few years after the web was invented, and the average website is still sufficiently ad hoc that the Tinker Toy level is a lot more visible.

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[1] Break any human-designed system down far enough and you'll often arrive at something as simple as a Tinker Toy. Although, of course, Tinker Toys are not that simple, so this fact may not help as much as you'd think. And this is not true of all systems: In metallurgy, the "simple" parts are atoms, quantum mechanics is not like Tinker Toys, and even if it was nobody has experience with a Tinker Toy set containing 10^28 pieces.

"Actually, it's like maintaining a skyscraper built from steel, concrete and glass integrated with complex HVAC, plumbing, electrical and elevator systems."

Adding, "Designed by a committee. Of MC Escher fans."

It never works!

Man, I really shouldn't be getting paid for this. Any idiot could [do X].

I think this is true in many fields.

It's usually a case of 'knowing where to tap'.. once you have that knowledge, the process of building stuff isn't always so difficult.

"It's like maintaining a skyscraper built out of Tinker Toys."

OMG. That is such a perfect analogy. I've had that same though, but not in those words. I'm probably going to steal that.

Man, I really shouldn't be getting paid for this. Any idiot could [do X].

I definitely think that periodically about technical translation. Any idiot could read some text and type the exact same text. Then I remember that not everybody can read German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hungarian, and still stay focused on being able to write readable English.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-kruger_effect

This is the Dunning-Kruger effect, is it not?

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

-Bertrand Russell

We build our computer systems the way we build our cities: over time, without a plan, on top of ruins. — Ellen Ullman

  > Does the following sentence run through the head of every expert in every field?
  > Man, I really shouldn't be getting paid for this. Any idiot could [do X].

That's because most experts are humble. That is what allowed them to become experts in the first place.

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