So today in discord one guy cracked this banger:
"Engineering in a nutshell"

Engineer A: *explains for 20minutes how to solve the problem in a very complex way*
Engineer B: "Or you could just put a screw here"
A: Dude that can't....
A: Fuck you you're right
B: you're welcome

Applicable in any engineering department, software included! xD

You know you've started out on your journey when you come up with a more optimal solution than your senior, you know you've completed it when your junior comes up with a more optimal solution than you.

3 years later: your project is now a wobbly mess held together with random screws and a dream.

Mecha is a great analogy because you would never actually do this in any remotely serious mecha project.
When you're testing software, you do the kind of stuff you would do with it under normal operation (including actions that are defined to fail), and assert that it
1. reacts as intended
2. returns to a state where it can be proven that repeated tests would never yield different results.
That second part is important. For example, if your function works as expected but retains a little more memory every time you run it, that's a memory leak.
The second step is also something you can never do in mechanical engineering. No amount of analysis can assert that a particular instance of a mechanical system didn't change state and didn't experience excessive wear during a test. Instead, in mechanical engineering you prove both the functionality and the endurance of a system, and only do practical tests to a limited extent.

Of course I'm talking about development. Durability tests before release are rather common in mecha, but that's not part of the development process.

@kwilliams sounds like the description self-indulgent narcissistic 20 something billionaire running a startup would say to tedx crowd.

"Held together with random screws and a dream. And with a small loan of five hundred million from my Harvard drop out buddy, we toiled with PASSION through many nights of pingpong here at THE LOFT to make our dream come true. Proving time and again, the american dream, that you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps and just invent the next google. Just do it. Go head. Do it. I'll wait."

@Wisecrack where did you obtain the manuscript for my TEDx talk?

@kwilliams I stole it like the Grinch Stole Christmas.

that reminds me of when the senior dev wanted to created a new table in the database and i said "what if we just create a boolean in this one that already exists" and he stared at the board for a few seconds "... huh that works!"