I think we forget that while “engineering” is about maximizing the gain for a given investment of resources, it can be stated another way as building the least amount of bridge that (reliably) satisfies the requirements.
Abstraction can be used to evoke category theoretical things, but more often it’s used to avoid making a decision. It’s fear based. It’s overbuilding the bridge to avoid problems we don’t know or understand. And that is not Engineering.
I find sometimes that it helps me to think of it as a fighter or martial artist might. It is only necessary to not be where the strike is, when the strike happens. Anything more might take you farther from your goal. Cut off your options.
Or a horticulturist: here is a list of things this plant requires, and they cannot all happen at once, so we will do these two now, and assuming plans don’t change, we will do the rest next year. But plans always change, and sometimes for the better.
In Chess, in Go, in Jazz, in coaching gymnastics, even in gun safety, there are things that could happen. You have to be in the right spot in case they do, but you hope they don’t. And if they don’t, you still did the right thing. Just enough, but not too much.
What is hard for outsiders to see is all the preparation for actions that never happen. We talk about mindfulness as if it hasn’t been there all along, in every skilled trade, taking up the space that looks like waste. People learn about the preparation and follow through, instead of waiting. Waiting doesn’t look impressive.
Your analogy with Chess and Go is flawed though. In these games you try to predict the best opponent move responding to yours, the worst case basically, and then try to find the best response you have to it, and so on, until you cannot spend any more time on that line or reach your horizon. You are not "hoping things do not happen". If you did that, you would be a bad chess or go player. You make sure things do not happen.
I disagree. Especially in teaching games, and everyone writing complex software is still learning.
In Go there are patterns that are probably safe, but that safety only comes if you know the counters. In a handicapped game, it’s not at all uncommon for white to probe live or mostly live groups to see if the student knows their sequences. You see the same in games between beginners.
Professional players don’t do this to each other. They can and will “come sideways” at a problem (aji) if it can still be turned into a different one, but they don’t probe when the outcome is clear. In a tournament it inflicts an opportunity cost on the eventual winner, and it is considered rude or petty. They concede when hope is lost.
They still invested the energy, but now it comes mostly from rote memorization.
And how does that contradict my point to always expect the best opponent move and think about the best thing to do in return, instead of simply hoping the worst will not happen? I think you are actually even supporting my point here.
Abstraction can be used to evoke category theoretical things, but more often it’s used to avoid making a decision. It’s fear based. It’s overbuilding the bridge to avoid problems we don’t know or understand. And that is not Engineering.
I find sometimes that it helps me to think of it as a fighter or martial artist might. It is only necessary to not be where the strike is, when the strike happens. Anything more might take you farther from your goal. Cut off your options.
Or a horticulturist: here is a list of things this plant requires, and they cannot all happen at once, so we will do these two now, and assuming plans don’t change, we will do the rest next year. But plans always change, and sometimes for the better.
In Chess, in Go, in Jazz, in coaching gymnastics, even in gun safety, there are things that could happen. You have to be in the right spot in case they do, but you hope they don’t. And if they don’t, you still did the right thing. Just enough, but not too much.
What is hard for outsiders to see is all the preparation for actions that never happen. We talk about mindfulness as if it hasn’t been there all along, in every skilled trade, taking up the space that looks like waste. People learn about the preparation and follow through, instead of waiting. Waiting doesn’t look impressive.