These famous people you cite are famous because they are "devs for devs". These guys were working on a _product_ (be it LaTex, games, text editors...) for which the user happened to be developers: by improving devx a little they had a lot of impact. That has little to do devs with individually spending a lot of time on their own tooling (for whom improving their devx a little has a little impact).
> Can you name one person who "blows most other engineers out of the water" while not "being obsessed with tech", using nothing but "the soft skills"?
The best engineers I've worked with were comfortable with their tools (of course, that's a requirement) but wouldn't be spending much time on incremental improvements. They'd spend time talking to customers, to PMs, to support, to leadership, learning about their domain and about how other engineers in the industry approached it. They _would_ spend time investing in tools that might be a game-changer (10x or whatever), but not things like vim configs and keyboards.
It always comes down to the same thing: you can have the best tech skills and tooling, yet a (decent) engineer who understand the domain and can communicate effectively will build a better product than you. That's hardly controversial.
> That's not for me though; I'm happy where I am.
I don't agree that it's a question of "growing out of engineering" at all (in fact I'd say it's "growing into" engineering from programming), but at the end of the day I'd totally agree that you should do what makes you happy! If you enjoy what you do and don't want to be doing the other stuff, who cares, I certainly won't be the one to tell you to change your ways!
> The best engineers I've worked with were comfortable with their tools (of course, that's a requirement)
Yeah, that's all what I'm saying.
> but wouldn't be spending much time on incremental improvements.
What is "an incremental improvement"?
My tools change depending on the work I do, and it so happens, the type of tasks I do sometimes change. When I say "working on tools," to me it's like knife sharpening. Sure, it's not impossible to cook with a dull knife, but it's helluva uncomfortable; why just not sharpen it? For me, it's like a chore I can't avoid, the only choice I can make is how to respond to it - and I choose to enjoy it. It takes less than two minutes to sharpen my knife - I have an electric sharpener. It's not tiny, but small enough so I can hold it in my hand, and it's not expensive. I also have regular sharpening stones. That process takes longer. I think I enjoy it, why not; it feels like meditation. But I don't do it every day, or even every week. I think I like how knives feel after.
So basically, I don't even understand what we are arguing about. Some engineers like extending the tools they use. Some, maybe not so much. Some spend a good amount of time doing that. They do it because they love it, and there are mostly benefits.
Some don't sharpen their knives at all - they simply throw them away and buy new set - I just don't know anyone like that in my circles. And similarly, I have never met engineers who never cared about improving their tooling even a little bit.
At the end of the day, we can probably all agree that doing the work without nicely "sharpened" tools is like cooking with a dull knife - it's not impossible; it's just why would anyone do this to themselves? It sounds anguishing.
These famous people you cite are famous because they are "devs for devs". These guys were working on a _product_ (be it LaTex, games, text editors...) for which the user happened to be developers: by improving devx a little they had a lot of impact. That has little to do devs with individually spending a lot of time on their own tooling (for whom improving their devx a little has a little impact).
> Can you name one person who "blows most other engineers out of the water" while not "being obsessed with tech", using nothing but "the soft skills"?
The best engineers I've worked with were comfortable with their tools (of course, that's a requirement) but wouldn't be spending much time on incremental improvements. They'd spend time talking to customers, to PMs, to support, to leadership, learning about their domain and about how other engineers in the industry approached it. They _would_ spend time investing in tools that might be a game-changer (10x or whatever), but not things like vim configs and keyboards.
It always comes down to the same thing: you can have the best tech skills and tooling, yet a (decent) engineer who understand the domain and can communicate effectively will build a better product than you. That's hardly controversial.
> That's not for me though; I'm happy where I am.
I don't agree that it's a question of "growing out of engineering" at all (in fact I'd say it's "growing into" engineering from programming), but at the end of the day I'd totally agree that you should do what makes you happy! If you enjoy what you do and don't want to be doing the other stuff, who cares, I certainly won't be the one to tell you to change your ways!