4 ms·

Awesome. 100 hours of some civil engineering and I will be able to build some small simple bridges.

lordnacho 11y ago
I built a radio and a bridge in my first 100 hours studying Engineering. Both fulfilled the required criteria: you could listen to the radio shows on the radio, and you could place the bridge between two tables and stand on it.
jerf 11y ago
Are you trying for sarcasm? I'd very much expect that with just a bit of civil engineering study you ought to be able to better design a bridge across a creek than if you did no study, ever. Heck, with the right focus, an hour of study on the topic could well greatly improve your work. Bridges aren't some sort of dark magic, after all, we've been building them for thousands of years.
- oddsignals 11y ago
  Although it took quite a few hundred years before we started consistently building them to a good enough standard that they didn't collapse after a few years, or decades. Something I remind myself of when I see the current state of software engineering.
  - jerf 11y ago
    I'm not talking about a bridge meant to stand for the ages. I did say "creek" after all. We do all understand that there's everything from bridges across creeks that we can literally step over to bridges across multi-mile spans of lake or ocean, right? 100 hours of civil engineering is only enough to get a sense of how big a problem the latter is, but is probably plenty to learn how to build something down in the single or low-double digit of feet range that will be safe to cross. I ask this quite seriously because it seems to me a lot of people get rather black-or-white on these sorts of issues, where either we must insist that we know nothing, absolutely nothing, and how dare you claim otherwise in your arrogance, OR we went to school for at least four years and got certified and have a job in the field and their opinions are unimpeachable and perfect on this matter. Probably an artifact of too much "school" and not enough experience in much of anything. In reality there are very few fields where there is no way to gain a modest amount of skill with modest effort; all the ones that leap to mind block you not because of the fundamental impossibility of learning a bit of something, but because of high capital entrance fees.
    - oddsignals 11y ago
      I actually agree with you, but I can see that it's not very obvious from my snarky comment. I've always been a generalist, and if there's one thing I hope I can teach my children it's that it's possible to learn how to do, make and fix just about anything - probably with less effort invested than they'd expect. I just think it's interesting how much more concerted effort, even over centuries, it takes us to figure out how to do these things on larger scales.
- JackFr 11y ago
  After about an hour of studying, I coached my daughter to a dominant performance in a spaghetti bridge building competition. (The key is gusset plates.)
mkartic3 11y ago
100 hours of civil engineering will definitely make you build better structures if you're a Lego enthusiast. It'll help you make more informed choices when you build your own house. I'm assuming if I removed the snark from your comment, you're trying to say that 100 hours isn't nearly enough for doing anything useful.

I built a radio and a bridge in my first 100 hours studying Engineering. Both fulfilled the required criteria: you could listen to the radio shows on the radio, and you could place the bridge between two tables and stand on it.

jerf 11y ago

Are you trying for sarcasm? I'd very much expect that with just a bit of civil engineering study you ought to be able to better design a bridge across a creek than if you did no study, ever. Heck, with the right focus, an hour of study on the topic could well greatly improve your work. Bridges aren't some sort of dark magic, after all, we've been building them for thousands of years.

oddsignals 11y ago
Although it took quite a few hundred years before we started consistently building them to a good enough standard that they didn't collapse after a few years, or decades. Something I remind myself of when I see the current state of software engineering.
- jerf 11y ago
  I'm not talking about a bridge meant to stand for the ages. I did say "creek" after all. We do all understand that there's everything from bridges across creeks that we can literally step over to bridges across multi-mile spans of lake or ocean, right? 100 hours of civil engineering is only enough to get a sense of how big a problem the latter is, but is probably plenty to learn how to build something down in the single or low-double digit of feet range that will be safe to cross. I ask this quite seriously because it seems to me a lot of people get rather black-or-white on these sorts of issues, where either we must insist that we know nothing, absolutely nothing, and how dare you claim otherwise in your arrogance, OR we went to school for at least four years and got certified and have a job in the field and their opinions are unimpeachable and perfect on this matter. Probably an artifact of too much "school" and not enough experience in much of anything. In reality there are very few fields where there is no way to gain a modest amount of skill with modest effort; all the ones that leap to mind block you not because of the fundamental impossibility of learning a bit of something, but because of high capital entrance fees.
  - oddsignals 11y ago
    I actually agree with you, but I can see that it's not very obvious from my snarky comment. I've always been a generalist, and if there's one thing I hope I can teach my children it's that it's possible to learn how to do, make and fix just about anything - probably with less effort invested than they'd expect. I just think it's interesting how much more concerted effort, even over centuries, it takes us to figure out how to do these things on larger scales.
JackFr 11y ago
After about an hour of studying, I coached my daughter to a dominant performance in a spaghetti bridge building competition. (The key is gusset plates.)

mkartic3 11y ago

100 hours of civil engineering will definitely make you build better structures if you're a Lego enthusiast. It'll help you make more informed choices when you build your own house. I'm assuming if I removed the snark from your comment, you're trying to say that 100 hours isn't nearly enough for doing anything useful.