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> But now engineering seems to be : let's ask my computing power what is the good design, with little further questioning. I see this quite often at the underg
by yiyus 8y ago
> But now engineering seems to be : let's ask my computing power what is the good design, with little further questioning.
I see this quite often at the undergrad level. Even for the simplest problem that can be solved with a pencil and a couple of calculations, many students launch their finite element software and blindly trust the results, even if it is telling them something obviously wrong, like orders of magnitude larger or smaller than expected, or with the opposite sign.
I acknowledge the problem, but I do not know where it comes from, or how to stop it.
- majewsky 8y agoI don't find that particularly surprising. Engineering students want to learn how to build machines to find solutions to everything, so it's intuitive that they would place a high confidence in a solution provided by a machine.
- yiyus 8y agoGood observation. There is a nice analogy to programming here. The same that one of the main tasks of the programmer is to handle errors, one of the main tasks of the engineer is to know the limitations of the tools he is using.
- C1sc0cat 8y agoWith no back checking?
- majewsky 8y agoThat's why I said "engineering students", not "engineers". Not blindly trusting your outputs is (or, at least, should be) part of the curriculum.
- salawat 8y agoIs this for real? That's startling to me. I don't really feel like I "know" something well enough to bother with the overhead of developing computer code until I can at least get the essence of it down on paper. Computers are for enumerating and increasing confidence in proofs. I find pen and paper to be far more creativity friendly.
- tellak 8y agoI personally think the gp is full of crap. I’m trained as an engineer and worked in industry a few years. There is no issue of smartness or skill, and of course computers are necessary, but its ridiculous to think they are some magic box... In the US, engineering has become a relatively shit profession. Poor pay, poor work environment (congruent with the op), poor status. You can make tons more (not just a little more) working for a decent software tech company, finance, medicine. You have to really love what you’re doing to stay in engineering.