re: I was always told, "Beware of programmers with screwdrivers."
better look out for me then..... I've programmed in several languages(like Assembler best..) and build lots of things with screwdrivers....
Dude no way! I cut my teeth programming in assembler ... Motorola 6800 ... when I was in high school. Late 70's. I built a Southwest Technical Products kit computer ... rewired a transformer to build the power supply ... the mother board was mounted on a piece of plywood, and the 5" floppy drive was in a shoe box. No software other than the debugger and assembler. I spent $1,000 of my paper route money to buy a Hazeltine 1500 24x80 terminal ... had a recurring dream that it actually was a color vector terminal that all I had to do was flip a dip switch inside. I wrote myself a WSYWIG text editor (no formatting of course) from the ground up ... bootstrapped it ... the first version I hand-entered in the machine language that allowed you to type and backup. Eventually I ended up having an array of pointers into a heap, for fast operation. It was pretty cool.
That was before my first wrenching disaster, which came a couple of years later. Decided to remove the air conditioning from my Volvo 145 station wagon. The compressor bracket was held on by two of the head bolts. Ignoring the fact that you don't just undo a couple of head bolts, it's also not good when they break. I had to call in my Volvo mechanic, who drilled them out with a magnadrill and installed studs. For the remaining years of its life, I would see those studs sticking up every time I opened the hood, and they would remind me of that episode.
After that I became quite a decent mechanic (clutches, head gasket, water pump, oil seals). I replaced the bearings in in a Ford 3 speed manual transmission once. Did one engine swap with a kid I was mentoring on his Corsica. That was funny ... we would come up against some sort of problem, and he would start freaking out, and I would just play the role of wise mechanic ... think through the problem, go to the tool box and assemble some combination of extensions and u-joints and what-not, quietly walk back to the car and solve the problem. It was pretty hilarious, and I played up my thoughtfulness like an award-winning actor. Years later we had a good laugh about that. He was a good kid ... early 30's now. Had a workplace injury and messed up his ankle and walks with a cane...battling with Labor and Industries. He has a 1-ton Ram 3500 and did a stint as a boat transport driver, so he can back a trailer. We went over the mountain pass to get my tractor in February, after I won it on the auction.
Currently though my focus is on learning hydraulics ... gotta do hydraulic top and tilt! I'm running through a 47 episode series on YouTube on hydraulics. Currently at episode 20.