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> Engineering is about starting from physical principles and building a product that fits the understanding of those fundamental principles at work. The enginee

by jjk166 6y ago

> Engineering is about starting from physical principles and building a product that fits the understanding of those fundamental principles at work. The engineer generally stays with a set of fundamental domain principles their entire career (e.g. sticks with bridges as opposed to transmission lines) while programmers tend to stay at the top layers while the technologies below the surface change radically. That's not how engineering works at all. The vast majority of engineering is working at a high level to take systems other people have long since perfected and slapping them together to solve new problems. If you need a solenoid valve, you don't design one, you buy one. And engineers do not stick to narrow domains - I've personally designed a seismic rated tv mount and a machine for testing helicopter flexbeams in the same day. How many bridges would need to be built for people to do nothing but bridges for 40 years? No, "I did not care enough to read the documentation and understand what I was working with" is not a valid excuse for making something that fails catastrophically. Of course there are going to be little idiosyncrasies that you would never expect if you weren't down in the weeds, but that's true of every field, and the solution is to assume that such issues will inevitably exist and design with appropriate factors of safety and redundancy.

unishark 6y ago
Your field may look vast to you but from where I'm sitting I couldn't even tell you what is different about the principles needed for tv mounts versus helicopter flexbeams. Both sound like statics class to me, presumably decades after you took it, still being used in your work. Fine the bridge guy may be able to build other structures. Though I suspect it will get increasingly difficult for them to get past the job interviews as they stray from their narrow domain. Meanwhile a software person who knows databases can create a database for practically any kind of organization in existence. I didn't say build things from scratch, I said use fundamental principles. Your solenoid operates directly on your fluids or whatever and you presumably need to be able to understand how. Is it not possible to choose incorrectly without having the right expertise?
- jjk166 6y ago
  So when you don't know the difference between two things you assume there is no difference and not only disregard those better informed than you who claim otherwise, but try to tell them how simple their profession is? Neither the tv mounts nor the testing machine were remotely close to statics class. For the seismic TV mounts, I had to make an economical laser cut sheet metal assembly which could be assembled in a field and still survive earthquakes. For the flexbeam tester, I had to design a machine that could survive millions of cycles while placed in an oven at high temperature to simulate the effects of 3 years of flight time in less than 1 year. To say it was just statics would be like saying software is just assigning variables. Conversely, if you are a database person, that is an incredibly narrow skillset. Creating a database isn't a profession, it's not even a job, it's just a task. Yes a database guy can create a database for practically any kind of organization, and the structures guy can analyze a truss for any kind of organization. But the engineer who can only analyze trusses is fired. Yes, an engineer must understand fundamental principles, but that is true of any profession. How can you set up a database without knowing the fundamentals of how a database works? How could an accountant manage money without knowing the fundamentals of transactions? How could a ditch digger dig a ditch if they don't understand the fundamentals of a shovel? Any job that requires no understanding whatsoever was automated away long ago. That said, most professions, engineers included, can treat many of these things as black boxes during day to day life. I don't know how any given solenoid valve is implemented, and I don't generally care beyond it being rated for my use case. Of course this can lead to problems - I once designed a big machine for scanning cars and the power cables wrapped around it made it act like a giant antennna interfering with the data cables to the cameras - that took a while to debug. The world is a fascinating place, you would do well to learn about it instead of resting on assumptions.
  - unishark 6y ago
    > So when you don't know the difference between two things you assume there is no difference and not only disregard those better informed than you who claim otherwise, but try to tell them how simple their profession is? Are you really snapping at me rudely over a disagreement about the differences between engineering and programming? To answer your question, no. I'm saying that it's the same technical domain. > Yes, an engineer must understand fundamental principles, but that is true of any profession. How can you set up a database without knowing the fundamentals of how a database works? Excellent point. Because it's at the heart of my reasoning too. Identify those fundamentals and you can apply my argument. In my prior post I noted the fundamentals in engineering are specifically physical principles. In the case of databases they are not, instead they are completely at an abstract level.

by jjk166 6y ago

unishark 6y ago

Your field may look vast to you but from where I'm sitting I couldn't even tell you what is different about the principles needed for tv mounts versus helicopter flexbeams. Both sound like statics class to me, presumably decades after you took it, still being used in your work. Fine the bridge guy may be able to build other structures. Though I suspect it will get increasingly difficult for them to get past the job interviews as they stray from their narrow domain. Meanwhile a software person who knows databases can create a database for practically any kind of organization in existence. I didn't say build things from scratch, I said use fundamental principles. Your solenoid operates directly on your fluids or whatever and you presumably need to be able to understand how. Is it not possible to choose incorrectly without having the right expertise?

jjk166 6y ago
So when you don't know the difference between two things you assume there is no difference and not only disregard those better informed than you who claim otherwise, but try to tell them how simple their profession is? Neither the tv mounts nor the testing machine were remotely close to statics class. For the seismic TV mounts, I had to make an economical laser cut sheet metal assembly which could be assembled in a field and still survive earthquakes. For the flexbeam tester, I had to design a machine that could survive millions of cycles while placed in an oven at high temperature to simulate the effects of 3 years of flight time in less than 1 year. To say it was just statics would be like saying software is just assigning variables. Conversely, if you are a database person, that is an incredibly narrow skillset. Creating a database isn't a profession, it's not even a job, it's just a task. Yes a database guy can create a database for practically any kind of organization, and the structures guy can analyze a truss for any kind of organization. But the engineer who can only analyze trusses is fired. Yes, an engineer must understand fundamental principles, but that is true of any profession. How can you set up a database without knowing the fundamentals of how a database works? How could an accountant manage money without knowing the fundamentals of transactions? How could a ditch digger dig a ditch if they don't understand the fundamentals of a shovel? Any job that requires no understanding whatsoever was automated away long ago. That said, most professions, engineers included, can treat many of these things as black boxes during day to day life. I don't know how any given solenoid valve is implemented, and I don't generally care beyond it being rated for my use case. Of course this can lead to problems - I once designed a big machine for scanning cars and the power cables wrapped around it made it act like a giant antennna interfering with the data cables to the cameras - that took a while to debug. The world is a fascinating place, you would do well to learn about it instead of resting on assumptions.
- unishark 6y ago
  > So when you don't know the difference between two things you assume there is no difference and not only disregard those better informed than you who claim otherwise, but try to tell them how simple their profession is? Are you really snapping at me rudely over a disagreement about the differences between engineering and programming? To answer your question, no. I'm saying that it's the same technical domain. > Yes, an engineer must understand fundamental principles, but that is true of any profession. How can you set up a database without knowing the fundamentals of how a database works? Excellent point. Because it's at the heart of my reasoning too. Identify those fundamentals and you can apply my argument. In my prior post I noted the fundamentals in engineering are specifically physical principles. In the case of databases they are not, instead they are completely at an abstract level.