A lesson I learned from an elderly metal workshop instructor has stayed with me for twenty years.

In our first year of university we were required to learn the basics of all engineering disciplines, including mechanical engineering. As luck would have it, Monday mornings began with the practical workshop

One particular lesson, however, had the vast majority of students miffed: we were to produce a hexagonal nut from a cubic metal block, using only a hammer, chisel and a vice

After hours of hard labor, sweat, cuts, bruises, and chunks of metal that were only hexagonally shaped under the most liberal interpretation of the word “shape”, we confronted the elderly gentleman in charge of the workshop.

“We’re training to be engineers,” we told him. “We’re meant to design these things. Why are we wasting hours learning a skill that we’ll never use? There are machines and crews to do these things.”

The man’s answer has stayed with me my entire career:

“So that you will know the difficulty of the work you tell others to do.”

Having selected software engineering as my specialization, I never got around to telling people to build hexagonal nuts, or anything physical for that matter. But I have always made it a point to have at least completed a “Hello World” version of any new task I assign my team.