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> We might find that our field could benefit from mining math related to mechanical and electrical engineering. Feedback and control theory, in particular, look
by lloeki 8y ago
> We might find that our field could benefit from mining math related to mechanical and electrical engineering. Feedback and control theory, in particular, looks like it i could have some utility.
This was all over the place behind the core theme of my CS master's degree, for which I happened to also have background in both mechanical and electrical engineering. There are a lot of things that felt quite natural to me but that were proving elusive and challenging to people I worked with who lacked an equally diverse background by being exclusively focused on CS.
Two points I raised were designing with, leveraging, and modelling feedback loops in component-based software using control theory (application was on auto-adaptative AV streaming across a network of varying quality† but the overarching theme was largely generalisable); and modelling execution flow using laws from electrical engineering (using high level concepts such as power potential and current intensity as well as qualifying code paths as being resistive, capacitive, and inductive) as an alternative approach to complexity and optimisation.
The resistance to cross-domain mixing was surprisingly high, entrenched thought processes are a remarkably deceitful thing, even when faced with provable results.
† Something I would find out to be implemented a couple of years later with zero-delay Xbox Live movie streaming.
- dosy 8y agoDo you have a link to your thesis?
- lloeki 8y agoHere's the ref[0], I lost both the tex source and pdf output in a double crash (backup and laptop basically simultaneously) and don't even have access to the full text anymore (oh the irony). My work on execution flow modelling wasn't referenced and is forever gone in that crash though. Bummer. It's only a master of advanced studies (Diplôme d'Etudes Approfondies [1]) so it's way shorter than a doctoral thesis. Also, the thing is probably half-assed in some way, as there was some, dare I say, "lack of support" on challenging ideas which was highly non-motivational on getting a proper paper out (The moment I talked about leveraging AI/NN in component supervision I was outcast as a sci-fi author). It doesn't cover half of my work (had to cut it down to only the core part, enough to get the gist of things, but that's only the tip of the iceberg). And it's in French. If you (or anyone else) can ever get the full text please forward it back to me so I can laugh at my arrogant young self! [0]: https://hal.inria.fr/inria-00000787 https://hal.inria.fr/inria-00000787 [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Advanced_Studies#France_and_francophone_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Advanced_Studies#Fra...