There are two schools of thought. One strives for correctness, even if that requires extra effort. Another is "anything goes as long as it somehow kind of works more than it doesn't."
(Actually it's most probably a spectrum rather than a binary division, but I'm no philosopher or sociologist, so for example's sake I'll operate with this simplified model here.)
The world en masse is generally preferring the latter (picking the easiest solutions, no matter how shitty they are - that's how we ended up with what we have today*), but among the engineers there are a significant number of people who believe that's how things should be.
There are numerous issues with copying and pasting `curl | bash` invocations from random webpages: all sorts of potential security issues, the installed software (if it works) could be installed in a way different from how your OS/distribution does things (or from your personal preferences), leading to all sorts of future issues, etc etc. Someone probably has a good write-up on this already. But - yeah - on the other hand, it works for number of people.
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*) And, of course, the opinions if what we have today is "good progress" or "unbearable crap" also vary.
| among the engineers there are a significant number of people who believe that's how things should be
There are close to zero people who tend to think like that among actual engineers. That's why we have reliable transportation and bridges and skyscrapers that work for (soon to be) centuries. On the other hand, we have lots of them among self-professed "engineers" who have changed many monikers over the past couple of decades and will probably call themselves "gods" in a few more years down the line.
> There are close to zero people who tend to think like that among actual engineers.
Oops. My apologies - I meant exactly that, that a significant number of engineers believe in correctness and sound approaches, but I had a brain fart writing that comment. It should've been "believe in the former".
No idea about how many non-software engineers take various shortcuts, though. But I think there's a non-negligible number of electronics engineers who do so - I'm not an expert in that field, but it's not unheard of skipping coupling capacitors or using a resistor divider instead of a voltage regulator to cut down the costs (because that still works... until it doesn't, of course).
Don't apologize; GP is being a pedant in order to pick a fight. The "real" definition of "engineer" doesn't matter; your post makes just as much sense if you'd instead used "software developers".
Can we please instead interpret people's comments in a charitable manner, as we can reasonably assume they were intended, not in the manner that allows us to pick pedantic fights with them?
>There are two schools of thought. One strives for correctness, even if that requires extra effort. Another is "anything goes as long as it somehow kind of works more than it doesn't."
...
The world en masse is generally preferring the latter (picking the easiest solutions, no matter how shitty they are - that's how we ended up with what we have today), but among the engineers there are a significant number of people who believe that's how things should be.*
I often have trouble articulating this at work. I will steal this and use something like it when advocating for correctness as opposed to shitty short sighted solutions. Thanks
(Actually it's most probably a spectrum rather than a binary division, but I'm no philosopher or sociologist, so for example's sake I'll operate with this simplified model here.)
The world en masse is generally preferring the latter (picking the easiest solutions, no matter how shitty they are - that's how we ended up with what we have today*), but among the engineers there are a significant number of people who believe that's how things should be.
There are numerous issues with copying and pasting `curl | bash` invocations from random webpages: all sorts of potential security issues, the installed software (if it works) could be installed in a way different from how your OS/distribution does things (or from your personal preferences), leading to all sorts of future issues, etc etc. Someone probably has a good write-up on this already. But - yeah - on the other hand, it works for number of people.
___
*) And, of course, the opinions if what we have today is "good progress" or "unbearable crap" also vary.