My experience with engineers is that they're the first to hang onto mechanical solutions to all sort of problems... without actually giving a fuck about how they work. They're taught that practical applications are king, that everything else isn't worth their time. They don't spend time in "silly" theory, because theory is for those stupid researchers and scientists that don't know how the "real world" works and bla bla bla.

My personal experience is different, so it may just depend upon which engineers you're talking to and what the topic was. I think that alnite's statement was perhaps vague and idealistic, but in a relative sense it is true. They care a heck of a lot more than typical consumers do - those are the people who just want it to work. True, engineers do tend to have a practical mindset, but if the application is practical I would say they do care how it works. Few engineers would be comfortable building a large bridge or making a complex control system to a formula without having some confidence that they know how it works and that it can scale accordingly. It doesn't look good in court if what you design kills people, and I think if they lacked all curiosity they'd be working on a production line or repairing electronics otherwise. I think the point of that sentence is "*insert name of group you respect here* don't actually seek solutions, they seek for deeper understanding of the whole system."

My experience with engineers is that they're the first to hang onto mechanical solutions to all sort of problems... without actually giving a fuck about how they work. They're taught that practical applications are king, that everything else isn't worth their time. They don't spend time in "silly" theory, because theory is for those stupid researchers and scientists that don't know how the "real world" works and bla bla bla.

If all engineers don't give a fuck about how the systems work, we won't have skyscrappers and man-made wonders. Those things need quite a lot of attention to details to last for more than a decade. I know nothing about civil engineering, but I am sure those rebars and concrete bricks are not laid off in randomly fashion, put together by engineers who only want practical solutions. Nothing is perfect, and sometimes engineers don't care that much about intricate details, but those that do tend to create things that last longer.

I have seen how some contractors work. These so called contractors should be experienced. Seeing how they work, I wouldn't call them engineers. I have seen one who plugged in wires into a live socket. He was lucky he didn't get electrocuted. Oh what did he say after he short-circuited the entire apartment building? The wire is malfunctioning. WTF!?

Another one: He came to fix a minor issue: a wobbly faucet in the bathroom. Simple problem, right? Just replace it and glue it. So he did, but he then managed to break the sink stopper. Didn't even bother testing first before leaving.

Put these examples into software engineering. Same issues. There are programmers who fix and break things at the same time. There are those who don't care about how the entire systems work, just want to fix that bug. Exceptions are thrown from everywhere? Gotta catch'em all! Silent errors are great, they give you bonuses at the end of the year. And we wonder why we have so many bugs in our software.

Not trying to sound all arrogant. There are differences in the quality of work from those who care and those who don't.

On my end ... as a tech ...

Okay, ouch, that's a solid example. Sorry to hear that. Just wondering, "tech" is pretty vague, how does your role involve dealing with all these engineer types? ;)