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I find this post intriguing not just for the actual effect, but as yet another little signal of the slow and steady mixing of serious-ish mathematics (though mo

by tw1010 9y ago

I find this post intriguing not just for the actual effect, but as yet another little signal of the slow and steady mixing of serious-ish mathematics (though mostly applied maths) into engineering culture; which there was almost no trace of only a few years ago.

m1el 9y ago
Author here. I'm not sure if this a typical case, but the reason I use serious-ish math is my major in physics. When I see a simulation problem calculus comes to mind first. In my experience there was not a single time calculus was applied in everyday engineering on my projects.
fest 9y ago
I disagree- maths has always been an essential tool of all engineering disciplines. Software engineering is not an exception (algorithms, control systems, graphics, simulations). Of course, a lot of people can and do write useful software knowing little to no maths, but then again, I suppose one can build a working bridge based on gut feeling as well.
- vidarh 9y ago
  The difference is that one can do software engineering without much "explicit" math and without resorting to gut feeling (though admittedly much is written on gut feeling too). By "explicit" I mean that e.g. a lot of things I work on for example certainly will use principles that you could write out formally using various mathematical disciplines, but I may or may not have been aware of the underlying maths when writing it, but that does not mean I'm not approaching it in a systematic way. In a lot of CS papers, even, the use of maths often turns out to be less formal than code, in that I often see maths used to handwave away details you can't get away with not presenting if writing it out as code.
- tonmoy 9y ago
  You could build a bridge with gut feeling, but if you wanted a stable bridge with the least possible material then you have to use math. In most software engineering cases, I guess having an abundance of resources lets us get away without math

by tw1010 9y ago

m1el 9y ago

Author here. I'm not sure if this a typical case, but the reason I use serious-ish math is my major in physics. When I see a simulation problem calculus comes to mind first. In my experience there was not a single time calculus was applied in everyday engineering on my projects.

fest 9y ago

I disagree- maths has always been an essential tool of all engineering disciplines. Software engineering is not an exception (algorithms, control systems, graphics, simulations). Of course, a lot of people can and do write useful software knowing little to no maths, but then again, I suppose one can build a working bridge based on gut feeling as well.

vidarh 9y ago
The difference is that one can do software engineering without much "explicit" math and without resorting to gut feeling (though admittedly much is written on gut feeling too). By "explicit" I mean that e.g. a lot of things I work on for example certainly will use principles that you could write out formally using various mathematical disciplines, but I may or may not have been aware of the underlying maths when writing it, but that does not mean I'm not approaching it in a systematic way. In a lot of CS papers, even, the use of maths often turns out to be less formal than code, in that I often see maths used to handwave away details you can't get away with not presenting if writing it out as code.
tonmoy 9y ago
You could build a bridge with gut feeling, but if you wanted a stable bridge with the least possible material then you have to use math. In most software engineering cases, I guess having an abundance of resources lets us get away without math