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Surely the best engineers writing code for cars and aeroplanes are not programming like this? MIT is teaching people to be web devs.

sokoloff 9y ago
One of the most common complaints about MIT CS (from outsiders and hiring managers) is that it’s not practical enough. There’s very little “applied” industry CRUD-type programming in the curriculum. I think this is a good thing, but also lament the changes in 6.001.
- msla 9y ago
  If courses were less expensive, they could afford to be less practical. Maybe this wouldn't quiet the hiring managers, but it's easier to tell someone to screw off when what you're selling isn't a huge investment which has been built up to be vitally important to justify that pricetag.
  - sokoloff 9y ago
    I don't think MIT EECS department has much to fear in the way of selling itself. MIT turns away almost 12 undergrad students for every 1 it admits.
aidenn0 9y ago
You're wrong. The only real exception is the code in airplanes, failures for which can cause loss-of-life (e.g. Jet ECUs, fly-by-wire). Even then, in some cases, the solution is not correct software, but a hardware fail-safe. Everything else is pretty much programmed like this. I've seen things you'd likely describe as "deeply embedded" running a CORBA server so that Java written by one company can communicate with C++ written by another company, integrated by a third company that doesn't have the source to either. Some automotive software is starting to show some trends towards the airplane approach, but the big exception among safety-critical parts is self-driving cars. Many of them even use ML algorithms for which it is non-trivial to even determine why a particular error was made. Cost is a big driver of this. Given equally competent programmers, creating formally correct software is 1-2 orders of magnitude at low levels of complexity. Current software-engineering indicates that the difference increases as complexity increases. You can easily end up spending 100x as much for software that has 1% as much complexity. Much of the time, features drive sales, and sales drive revenue, so the less rigorous software ends up with both higher budget and lower costs.
fulafel 9y ago
My impression is that the car industry doesn't invest in good programmers, they invest in controls and stringent procedures/conventions along with a conservative mindset. Stuff like tools to verify you don't use the most dangerous features of C.

sokoloff 9y ago

One of the most common complaints about MIT CS (from outsiders and hiring managers) is that it’s not practical enough. There’s very little “applied” industry CRUD-type programming in the curriculum. I think this is a good thing, but also lament the changes in 6.001.

msla 9y ago
If courses were less expensive, they could afford to be less practical. Maybe this wouldn't quiet the hiring managers, but it's easier to tell someone to screw off when what you're selling isn't a huge investment which has been built up to be vitally important to justify that pricetag.
- sokoloff 9y ago
  I don't think MIT EECS department has much to fear in the way of selling itself. MIT turns away almost 12 undergrad students for every 1 it admits.

aidenn0 9y ago

You're wrong. The only real exception is the code in airplanes, failures for which can cause loss-of-life (e.g. Jet ECUs, fly-by-wire). Even then, in some cases, the solution is not correct software, but a hardware fail-safe. Everything else is pretty much programmed like this. I've seen things you'd likely describe as "deeply embedded" running a CORBA server so that Java written by one company can communicate with C++ written by another company, integrated by a third company that doesn't have the source to either. Some automotive software is starting to show some trends towards the airplane approach, but the big exception among safety-critical parts is self-driving cars. Many of them even use ML algorithms for which it is non-trivial to even determine why a particular error was made. Cost is a big driver of this. Given equally competent programmers, creating formally correct software is 1-2 orders of magnitude at low levels of complexity. Current software-engineering indicates that the difference increases as complexity increases. You can easily end up spending 100x as much for software that has 1% as much complexity. Much of the time, features drive sales, and sales drive revenue, so the less rigorous software ends up with both higher budget and lower costs.

fulafel 9y ago

My impression is that the car industry doesn't invest in good programmers, they invest in controls and stringent procedures/conventions along with a conservative mindset. Stuff like tools to verify you don't use the most dangerous features of C.