I’ve started to notice a trend in some of the students I have met through university, a handful that have decided to get really good at software engineering. It is almost hard to describe, but these students have a degree of confidence in their work that reminds me of some of the great software engineers.
Many of these students tend to have a deep respect for the craft of software engineering. They focus on the process, almost mythologizing the process and pain in development. This focus often leads to avoiding the use of LLMs for ‘real’ engineering (define that however you would like). Some even go as far as flat out rejecting the technology while others keep a healthy skepticism of it.
I’m not 100% sure about this next aspect, but I’ve noticed a general trend of choosing technology and languages outside the norm. I’ve heard this described as both a viewpoint expression and a personality expression. In the words of Tobi Lütke:
… the programming language ends up being the mechanism for translating this perfect picture you have in your head onto a canvas. And so, you know, if you have, like, an amazing landscape and they give you crayons, it’s possible to make a masterpiece of crayons, but it will be, it will always be a crayons painting. So this is sort of in the way Java and others, they just didn’t match the way my brain ended up constructing the relationships that make up software.
– Tobi Lütke, describing Ruby How I Built This: Shopify
This is another one of those anecdotal parts, but many seem to use bespoke editors such as Neovim, Helix, Emacs, or similar. This could again be part of that respect of the craft, and a desire to be as good at the drafting and editing as possible.
They tend to be hella ambitious! These are the students who don’t back down from a hard challenge. A few of the wild projects I’ve seen are a grammar checker Harper, a new computing paradigm Math Sandbox,an Arduino robot simulator Mosscap, a voxel engine from scratch voxel-engine, and reverse engineered Mario Maker 2’s APIs tgrcode.com just to name a few.
Oh, and did I mention that it is intoxicating to talk to them. I can’t help but feel drawn in by their knowledge.
neoengineer - noun
An individual, part of a resurgence, who embraces and respects the craft of engineering. Often enjoys solving hard problems.