It seems like software development has been a sort of modern-day trade for at least the past decade or two, sort of like smithing was 1000 years ago.
Sometimes people come to you with odd requests, and there's definitely a creative side to the more interesting problems, but there's also a lot of churning out nails and horseshoes. Still, you're unlikely to go hungry.
I like the comparison to organizing a workshop. Everyone has their own preferred environments, editors, scripts, etc. And you'd probably feel as uncomfortable using someone else's .vimrc as an ancient smith would have been in an unfamiliar forge. A craftperson's tools are like clothes; it feels uncomfortably weird to use someone else's.
Sometimes people come to you with odd requests, and there's definitely a creative side to the more interesting problems, but there's also a lot of churning out nails and horseshoes. Still, you're unlikely to go hungry.
I like the comparison to organizing a workshop. Everyone has their own preferred environments, editors, scripts, etc. And you'd probably feel as uncomfortable using someone else's .vimrc as an ancient smith would have been in an unfamiliar forge. A craftperson's tools are like clothes; it feels uncomfortably weird to use someone else's.