[sodafountan]

I actually have a good friend who was a car mechanic for a few years; we sort of grew up together. I became a developer, and he ended up driving for a towing company after he burned out in the shop.

I don't know who had it more difficult. Both are careers worthy of respect.

Mechanics need more spatial awareness and are hands-on; it's relatively easy to change the oil or swap out a tire. He taught me how to do brakes once, but I didn't internalize any of it. It's not so easy to replace an engine.

I did full-stack development for five or six years. He actually came over once, and I taught him a few things about the modern front-end stack. How to run Node.js, how to install dependencies via npm, and how to use GitHub. All things he was curious about.

I would assume it's pretty annoying to work at a local or small-scale shop and have a car come in with modern electrical issues that only the manufacturer knows how to deal with.