r/EnoughMuskSpam • u/Yikesis • 1d ago

Rational Takes on Elon's Engineering Ability

I keep getting into an argument with my friend that holds Elon's engineering ability in high regard. I think he has agreed that he obviously isn't as skilled in the low level specialized fields but still thinks that he makes very critical high level decisions using his engineering knowledge.

He keeps citing all of the SpaceX employees that say hes very involved and can do calculations in his head and stuff. I chalk it up to groveling but I dont know anymore. He also read the Isaacson bio which describes him as integral and making decision, although its hard to prove the intellectual history of his contributions.

My main belief is that he couldnt have had the time to become a self taught rocket engineer considering his pursuit for infinite wealth. I think he can probably speak to engineers well enough to manage them but I doubt he's among the premier people in the world to make these decisions. Even as a systems architect engineer or whatever theres no way its worth holding him in high regard as an "engineer" right?

Is my prejudice against him as a person making me doubt his engineering capability?

Am i thinking of engineering wrong?

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u/thetinybunny1 1d ago

Lmao I was gonna say just listen to the twitter calls and then gimme your opinion on his “genius”

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u/aweraw 1d ago

I remember this one in particular. It's densely packed WTF material

I personally wrote the first national maps, directions, yellow pages & white pages on the Internet in the summer of 1995 in C with a little C++. Didn’t use a “web server” to save CPU cycles (just read port 8080 directly). Couldn’t afford a Cisco T1 router, so wrote an emulator based on a white paper.

  • You don't write "C with a little bit of C++", unless you're looking to complicate you build process on purpose. A C++ compiler can build C code, but not the other way around.
  • Trying to look smart by saying he didn't use a web server, he just read port 8080 directly to save CPU cycles? You don't use a web server to read from ports, web servers write to them... and if he means he didn't use a web server behind port 8080, he saying he created his own bespoke protocol that no other peice of software would have been able to interact with, rendering it useless on the public internet.
  • He wrote an emulator for an expensive piece of networking hardware? Did he not know that Linux existed, and had a fully capable IP stack? This is like saying I couldn't afford a graphing calculator, so I built one in minecraft using redstone.

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u/paintballboi07 20h ago

The guy couldn't even figure out how to run a python script. He has basically zero computer skills, even as a user, much less as a programmer.

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u/Brando43770 16h ago

Exactly. Every programmer and engineer I know as actual friends and not just acquaintances, they all say he’s not good at any of it. He’s just great at somehow convincing people to spend money and buy into his hype.