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A comment on Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?. Parent comment

Re:Why did we wait so long for the bicycle? by mveety on Monday July 15, 2019 @05:23PM (#20445409)
Why? That's akin to saying a mechanical engineer isn't worth their salt unless they know how to design and implement software. They're two different specialties that do different things. To be a good mechanical engineer you absolutely don't need to be good at making or even have tried to have make software.
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Re:Why did we wait so long for the bicycle? by dredmorbius on Monday July 15, 2019 @06:04PM (#20445727)
Cross-discipline experience is invaluable, especially across several domains. One begins to appreciate commonalities, uniquenesses, and the infuriating significance of details only apparent on in-depth experimentation and iteration.

As with usability testing, small-n samples, say three to five, go a long way.

Do you have cross-domain expertise yourself?

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Re:Why did we wait so long for the bicycle? by andrewflnr on Monday July 15, 2019 @10:28PM (#20447029)
That's all true, and almost entirely irrelevant to the (very strong!) claim "a software engineer who hasn't built some mechanism is not worthy of the title".
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Re:Why did we wait so long for the bicycle? by kqr on Tuesday July 16, 2019 @01:00AM (#20447588)
But why specifically manufacture of consumer goods, when there are so many other disciplines, like horseback riding, nursing, human resources, and so on.
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