I think this gear thing may be a strong difference between STEM and humanities orientation. (I work more or less STEM, but just to pay bills, I am more of a hobby historian and suchlike at heart.) Taking everything literally, and liking high-density content, while skimming fluff and focusing on intended meaning instead of literal meaning is more of a humanities thing.
This is why I tend to insist that programming should not be called software engineering. Programs are written primarily for people to read, and only secondarily for computers to execute, and thus it floats somewhere in between STEM-type precision and humanities type good readable writing. In my experience programmers don’t exactly have the highly precise, literalist minds of e.g. mechanical engineers. Nor the “there are multiple viewpoints” type of overly-fluffy humanities angle, but somewhere in between—something more like a craft than engineering or philosophy.
BTW a sad reminder of how good Reddit used to be. Thanks.
(This is entirely offtopic, but is there a way to stop this fluctuation of subcultures? Large websites count as subcultures the same way as musical styles count as one. Usually a subculture is started by more high-brow people and as it gets popularized and more low-brow people move in, the starters move on to the next one. I was strongly suspecting that the idea of subreddits may be the killer feature that stops it. Alas, not. even /r/insightfulquestions are insightful only on a high school debating club level. From another angle, it is not merely just an IQ based in and out migration, it is also age based.)
I think this gear thing may be a strong difference between STEM and humanities orientation. (I work more or less STEM, but just to pay bills, I am more of a hobby historian and suchlike at heart.) Taking everything literally, and liking high-density content, while skimming fluff and focusing on intended meaning instead of literal meaning is more of a humanities thing.
This is why I tend to insist that programming should not be called software engineering. Programs are written primarily for people to read, and only secondarily for computers to execute, and thus it floats somewhere in between STEM-type precision and humanities type good readable writing. In my experience programmers don’t exactly have the highly precise, literalist minds of e.g. mechanical engineers. Nor the “there are multiple viewpoints” type of overly-fluffy humanities angle, but somewhere in between—something more like a craft than engineering or philosophy.
BTW a sad reminder of how good Reddit used to be. Thanks.
(This is entirely offtopic, but is there a way to stop this fluctuation of subcultures? Large websites count as subcultures the same way as musical styles count as one. Usually a subculture is started by more high-brow people and as it gets popularized and more low-brow people move in, the starters move on to the next one. I was strongly suspecting that the idea of subreddits may be the killer feature that stops it. Alas, not. even /r/insightfulquestions are insightful only on a high school debating club level. From another angle, it is not merely just an IQ based in and out migration, it is also age based.)