The Medico and the Engineer

Of late I have been getting some comments from some person @ Harvard Med. Although this person doesn't reveal himself/herself, the comments, all of them, point well toward what I like to call the typical "we-are-superior-to-moron-programmers" syndrome.

I have noticed that in a lot of medicos. They share somewhere, to varying extents of course, this syndrome. Although I cannot speak for everyone on the globe, I can say that back home in India, we are orthogonal people right from when we leave High School. A lot of people I know begin with a choice, whether to choose Math or Bio. (No offense to people who do not choose either, I respect them more than I respect people who choose one of these. It takes some amount of courage to be away/different from stereotypical). Whoever chooses Math aspires to be an Engineer, whoever chooses Bio aspires to be a Medico. More often than not, the Engineering aspiration is fulfilled, one way or the other with those numerous Engineering colleges springing up all over the place. But the Medico ambition, no, not so easy. So the very few people who do manage to end up as Medicos, are undoubtedly brilliant.

But what I have noticed is that with this brilliance, comes vanity. And a disrespect for the orthogonal counterparts, which is the Engineers. Just because your dream was harder to realize, suddenly the other person looks like a moron.

Its interesting how the comments are. Not just from this anonymous medico at Harvard, but from some other real-life persons I have seen. Just because there seem to be so many engineers around, suddenly, engineering becomes a dumb profession for dim-witted people with half-brains. The comments I have had on my blog clearly show a lack of comprehension for what I have written, they look more like comments that have been made just for the sake of insulting "programmers". They always look like they were written after reading the blog in a rush and never show any understanding of the point I am trying to make. I take this up as a defense for Engineering as a profession, I am not a programmer.

I believe each profession is important, else you would not be paid to do it. If I didn't do my job the way I did it, this medico guy/gal would not have access to my blog like he/she does. We build the internet and whatever else goes with it. Similarly, any job. If you are being paid to do it, it carries some value with it. You can argue who is more important, but at the end, the only thing you achieve is undervaluing everyone else and thinking you are in the most supreme of professions. Ego. Never a good thing.

So I leave this post trailing. Just some food for thought:)