That's an elegant way of putting it. At the core I don't believe that software engineers are assembly line workers. They are not cogs in some big machine that can be automated. Writing web applications requires creativity and intellectual thought. Everyone knows that telling someone "be creative now!" is a ridiculous approach.
'They are not cogs in some big machine that can be automated. Writing web applications requires creativity and intellectual thought. Everyone knows that telling someone "be creative now!" is a ridiculous approach.'
On a number of occasions I've talked with people in the Web development/software business, and they make regular use of the term "creatives". And every single time they use it to distinguish some group of people (designers, ad writers, whatever) from mere software developers. Who, apparently, are not creative, or not doing creative work.
It's probably a lost cause to get people to consider software developers part of that group (at least with those who most often us that term), so I propose we call developers, hackers, engineers, etc. "Inventives."
Worse yet, the dissonance between straight-jacketed cog-in-a-machine style working environments and the need for creativity and deep intellectual thinking is often a source of cognitive and emotional stress. So much so that I believe it's a primary factor behind burnout in the tech industry.
So many of the norms of the tech industry revolve around a belief in the productivity of "be creative now!" And to a certain extent it does work. But only in a very limited fashion and only at an extraordinarily high cost (reduced job satisfaction, high levels of turnover, high levels of burn-out, etc.)
