Very few software engineers are working in novel design spaces. Even 1:1000 is probably being generous. FWIW, this is true of conventional engineering too, but even more so.
A software engineer having no idea how to build something doesn’t make it novel, it just indicates inexperience or ignorance in all but a vanishingly small number of cases.
In practical systems, you won’t find much novelty outside the rare frontiers of performance optimization, systems software architecture, the occasional bit of weird silicon with unusual computational properties, and some narrow algorithm domains that have never been adequately developed e.g. compression and AI. Almost no software development can justify even thinking about these types of things and they virtually never do.
Conventional engineering is worse because the laws of physics constrain almost everything to boring well-explored solutions. In some cases, we’ve pretty much done exhaustive exploration of what is possible.
A software engineer having no idea how to build something doesn’t make it novel, it just indicates inexperience or ignorance in all but a vanishingly small number of cases.
In practical systems, you won’t find much novelty outside the rare frontiers of performance optimization, systems software architecture, the occasional bit of weird silicon with unusual computational properties, and some narrow algorithm domains that have never been adequately developed e.g. compression and AI. Almost no software development can justify even thinking about these types of things and they virtually never do.
Conventional engineering is worse because the laws of physics constrain almost everything to boring well-explored solutions. In some cases, we’ve pretty much done exhaustive exploration of what is possible.