Are software engineers actually smart? (Asking for physicists and math guys)

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KWiC00

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KWiC00
Jun 12, 2021 17 Comments

I'm a former CS Engineering major, mid-level software engineering scope at my current job, been learning a lot of systems design and algorithms not just in university but even now to make sure I can keep up with what's going on. Don't want to fall behind.

When I learn about distributed systems via books, lecture videos, articles, and technical papers once in a while, I never encounter anything that really seems "hard". It's usually just that the explanation is pretty bad and you need to look it up, think about it, reflect on it, or try to find a friend who understands it really well and articulates it properly. Once you invest the time, it's possible to learn it. Maybe you never heard the concept before, so you look it up, find the origin, and digest it.

So, is software engineering actually pretty easy, and eng's aren't actually very smart people?

I'm also thinking about my previous times doing maths in university. Honestly, theoretical math puzzles and algo theory WAS tough for me. But I felt the barrier was not "intelligence" but rather "creativity". You need to look at problem multiple times from various angles, and think carefully, maybe you get "Eureka!" moment and you can imagine it, or you fail completely and couldn't come up with the creative answer, you need to ask your prof after.

So what's really the difference between "smart" and "not smart"? It seems like what really matters is time investment, careful thinking, access to high quality materials, and creativity (sometimes).

One argument I think would be really good is that a "smart guy" is capable of learning a lot and very quickly from very low quality learning material. I think this might be the answer. A lot of my "smart" friends can listen to a crappy half-ass explanation from professor and then immediately got what it means. I had to listen to it three times and then I get it. But then in the end we had the same knowledge in our brains though.

When I see my friends who end up going into maths or research the work they do seems hard but I honestly have no domain knowledge or any context whatsoever, they could just be mashing frameworks together all day just like me. Whence cometh "difficulty" and "smarts"?

TC: 350K before stock appreciation

#tech #smart #math #maths #college #professors #academic

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  • I am SWE but maths background and friends with a number of PhDs in physics. Professional
    software folks are not as smart as people who understand QFT or you know algebraic manifolds and differential topology and so on. However, software is same sort of abstract smarts plus a practical and social aspect. Linus Torvalds is no Sean Carroll but he understands the kernel at a technical level and can get a giant group of people to make it better continually for decades. That is hard but not math hard and a lot of the difference is in execution - code that can be modified, keeping unhelpful people away, encouraging helpful people, etc. In a way programming to maths is like surgery to biology. You have to use it, and smartness helps, but steady hands and building a good team is irreplaceable.
    Jun 12, 2021 5
    • Not really a good answer but I am so happy to use actual concrete equations in designing a system, instead of just some order of magnitude guesses in volumes and stuff. And counting, we do a lot of reasoning about which part of broken based on relative polls sizes and failure rates. Where as just building a solid model of let’s say an analytic function takes way more than six but less than twenty profound realizations about convergent series, how the two dimensions of complex variables interact via the Cauchy-Riemann equations. The way exponents and limits interact to give you trig. It all hangs together in a big beautiful jewel, so much simpler that working over rationals or reals. Mastering The mental
      model of way Spring apps tho, you have a lot more details and each detail is relatively simpler than complex
      differentiation. The other thing is in complex analysis, when your brain starts wondering if there isn’t some deeper unity between apparently different things, there often is, but you have to just roll the things around in your for a while. With Spring there isn’t really a deeper unity. Use this little mental model here and this one here. Now deeper pieces are more unified - concurrency and distributed systems, but again that all springs out of special relativity and is, math wise, childs play compared to QFT. Even just QED which I can also get since the group theory is easier is brain bending. In the middle of a chapter one thing seems to make sense but it fades.
      Jun 12, 2021
    • Snap
      KWiC00

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      KWiC00
      OP
      Very interesting. I wonder what those pioneer legends who actually created these frameworks were really like then.
      Jun 12, 2021
  • I mean I think what you described is generally true even in scientific research. It’s pretty rare for someone to have a truly original idea that actually makes an impact and advances an area.

    Can you be more specific about defining “intelligence” as well? Creativity does seem like a form of intelligence to me. Do you mean raw logical horsepower to parse complex logical statements?
    Jun 12, 2021 3
    • Yeah he was a hardcore intuitionist - absolutely detested proofs.

      I think I read that he believed he was conversing the Hindu goddess Lakshmi when coming up with this equations since he was deeply, deeply religious.

      I think the word “intelligence” isn’t really helpful since it’s a stand-in for a lot of different things. Folks can be “intelligent” in different ways - e.g. navigating complex political situations, creating beautiful music / art, developing beautiful mathematics etc.
      Jun 12, 2021
    • VMware
      vmBear

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      vmBear
      75% of the people going into CS are after financial rewards (which is totally fine). And 0% of the people going into Math/Physics are after financial rewards. There are smart people in all fields, but one crowd is more intellectually curious on average.
      Jun 12, 2021
  • Citadel
    pizza roll

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    pizza roll
    The vast majority are really mediocre. I’m convinced the average SWE has absolutely no idea how anything works. And maybe 1 in 10 at a top tech company is actually innately bright.
    Jun 12, 2021 1
  • How do you think theoretical math puzzles and algo theory in university compares/relates to leetcode and technical interviews then? Are interviews hard? Or are they not?
    Jun 12, 2021 0
  • Google
    CJJT04

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    CJJT04
    I mean you're just comparing to something that you find harder. You can apply this logic to anything. There will always be someone who thinks what you think is hard is easy. There's no end to how high you can go. The existence of something harder than X doesn't make X easy IMO.
    Jun 12, 2021 1
    • Hard like QFT is hard takes a lot more intellectual chops than dynamic programming or other leet code things. And notice the gateway for SW isn’t doing something awesome that takes six months or years like the Poincaré conjecture proof but doing harder than Godel’s proof but easier than renormalization in an hour. That isn’t picking smarts it is picking smart execution. It would be like hiring surgeons based on a “remove this spleen as fast as you can.” It’s a reasonable test for surgeons but you wouldn’t want your director of epigenetics to be hired that way.
      Jun 12, 2021