A Short Story for Engineers
I like the values that jokes like this reinforce (simplicity, creativity, and proactivity versus complexity, expense, and bureaucracy) but I wonder if they serve a positive purpose in engineering culture. Do we tell these jokes to keep ourselves on our toes, to make ourselves better? Are we really in danger of forgetting which is better, simplicity or complexity? When we create complex and over-engineered systems, is it because we forget that simplicity is better?I don't think we do. I think we tell ourselves these jokes to contrast good engineering with bad engineering and to congratulate ourselves for being on the right side. A good joke would lead you down the garden path, encourage a bit of smugness and then rip the rug out from under you. This joke telegraphs the punch line from the start: it encourages smugness and then vindicates it. A healthy joke would make us uncomfortable about whether we would have been on the right side, whether we are doing a good job of living up to our values. This joke reassures us that the problem is other people's values, and by doing so, it promotes exactly the kind of complacency that it makes fun of.