3 ms·

While it would be nice to decide on best practices, I fear that the amount of cargo culting and NIH syndrome would quickly render the initiative pointless :-(

johnbellone 4y ago
There is a place for a professional society but we need to think about it much differently than traditional engineering and closer to how the academic subculture operates. We're humans and we've been trying to figure out since the beginning of our existence how to effectively organize and communicate information, but making a decision on that information, that is the hard part.
- greggyb 4y ago
  The idea of an academic model definitely appeals to me. One thing I often struggle to find which is very common in academia is a literature review and a survey of common approaches. This sort of thing would be hugely valuablen tackling various challenges in building products and services. Some examples we are currently tackling are secret management and rolling out updates. I can easily find products that promise to solve these. I can find some articles about "how we, at $COMPANY, solve this particular problem." If I am really lucky I can find one or two articles that answer "here is what we, at $COMPANY, do, and here are one or two alternatives we did not like for reasons relevant to our context." It is very difficult to find a proper review that lays out common patterns of implementation and gives a framework to discuss tradeoffs thereof.
- sidlls 4y ago
  Do you think traditional engineering culture is not an academic one?
  - johnbellone 4y ago
    My statement was meant to compare/contrast an academic subculture -- conferences, papers, discussions, debates -- with a professional society such as the NSPE. We do have our own share of professional societies that fit the bill but we do not have a requirement for licensure in our industry. By definition it is a different animal.
  - johnbellone 4y ago
    I also think that there are many organizations that have tried to provide a solution to the problem -- and arguably, solve it effectively -- such as the IETF, IET, etc., but we're at a interesting and exciting part of a field that is only a few decades old. We're still learning. There are thousands of graduates in our field that were not formally educated in computer science. That's not a requirement to be in the job.

johnbellone 4y ago

There is a place for a professional society but we need to think about it much differently than traditional engineering and closer to how the academic subculture operates. We're humans and we've been trying to figure out since the beginning of our existence how to effectively organize and communicate information, but making a decision on that information, that is the hard part.

greggyb 4y ago
The idea of an academic model definitely appeals to me. One thing I often struggle to find which is very common in academia is a literature review and a survey of common approaches. This sort of thing would be hugely valuablen tackling various challenges in building products and services. Some examples we are currently tackling are secret management and rolling out updates. I can easily find products that promise to solve these. I can find some articles about "how we, at $COMPANY, solve this particular problem." If I am really lucky I can find one or two articles that answer "here is what we, at $COMPANY, do, and here are one or two alternatives we did not like for reasons relevant to our context." It is very difficult to find a proper review that lays out common patterns of implementation and gives a framework to discuss tradeoffs thereof.
sidlls 4y ago
Do you think traditional engineering culture is not an academic one?
- johnbellone 4y ago
  My statement was meant to compare/contrast an academic subculture -- conferences, papers, discussions, debates -- with a professional society such as the NSPE. We do have our own share of professional societies that fit the bill but we do not have a requirement for licensure in our industry. By definition it is a different animal.
- johnbellone 4y ago
  I also think that there are many organizations that have tried to provide a solution to the problem -- and arguably, solve it effectively -- such as the IETF, IET, etc., but we're at a interesting and exciting part of a field that is only a few decades old. We're still learning. There are thousands of graduates in our field that were not formally educated in computer science. That's not a requirement to be in the job.