I stumbled across a “parable about software development” earlier today on lobste.rs. It’s an amusing little tale that reminded me of the classic Malcom in the Middle lightbulb replacement scene. It also alerted me to the existence of the SharkBite product line, and that fact that SharkBite doesn’t gibe with galvanized pipe. This made me curious - I’m not hip to newfangled pipe technology - so I gave it a Goog.
The first search result didn’t really explain why SharkBite doesn’t work with galvanized pipe, but the comments caught my attention. I’ve talked a bit before _about this idea around “Why don’t they just…?”, and the very first comment on the original question is precisely that. (Paraphrased) “Instead of using _ SharkBite why don’t you just ?” What I really love is that Duder doesn’t stop there. He doubles down, continuing with (also paraphrased) “…and furthermore, only a moron would be using galvanized pipe in the first place…”
Holy crap. I’m fairly certain he’s not just maliciously trolling; this isn’t YouTube comments, it’s StackOverflow for Pipe and presumably anyone who’s there is either a Pipe Expert or genuinely interested in Pipe Shit. So giving the benefit of the doubt and taking Occam’s Razor (or, perhaps, Hanlon’s) into account, I’m left assuming that ol’ Hans was genuinely confident that this was the best/most helpful possible answer he could provide.
…and maybe it actually was. Hell, I dunno, I’m not a professional piperer. Maybe galvanized pipe is trash. Maybe SharkBite is for n00bs who use a 3-dozer build. Even so…if one were attempting to describe the word “hubris” to someone whose native language (1) wasn’t English and (2) didn’t have a 1-for-1 translation for the word, one might simply point them at this interaction.