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This is exactly why I still believe that what we do is not engineering. How long would a civil engineer be employed if he refused to use proven techniques and c

This is exactly why I still believe that what we do is not engineering. How long would a civil engineer be employed if he refused to use proven techniques and complained that he was not having enough fun on the latest bridge project? This nonsense might be fine for game development, but there is a great deal of software that affects people's lives. It is time for our profession to grow up.

dap 15y ago
Don't paint us all with one brush. I suspect there's a significant bias in observation here because it's the sexy, fun stuff that everyone hears about. There are lots of people taking the profession seriously, but many of them are behind corporate walls or just not focused on making their work look flashy.
click170 15y ago
I think the problem comes from defining what 'grown up' is, because in my experience it changes depending on who you ask (corporate employee vs consultant).
randomdata 15y ago
I'm not certain we know enough about the domain to say the profession can grow up. We're still building bridges by placing downed trees across rivers. It works, well even, but we're still trying to build a multilane causeway and it is going to take a lot more trial and error to get there. I believe it is a good thing that we have people working with all types of mentalities. People building software to power airplanes can use the downed tree and know it is going to work, even if it is not pretty and requires a lot of extra effort. People building web startups can experiment with the cutting edge technology and see how it fares, slowly passing the good back to the more conservative groups. I think we're pretty lucky that we, as an industry, don't need to completely grow up. It keeps us constantly trying new ideas, some of which are good.
- wladimir 15y ago
  Completely agreed. Software engineering is not mature yet itself, so pretending to be all-mature about it by sticking to 30-year old rigid "best practices" can be counter-productive at best. People sometimes forget that new techniques might be more robust and safe than old ones, as various insights have been gained over the years. Your other point is also good. The technology to choose depends on the domain. Web startups and airplanes/weapons being the extremes. There is no feelgood overall advice that applies to everyone.
yxhuvud 15y ago
The profession will grow up as the tools mature. The reason engineers don't use new flashy techniques for bridge building is that there isn't that much happening[]. [] For the standard everyday bridge. New techniques and solutions are tried out for exotic bridges - bridges for high speed trains and such.
rimantas 15y ago
I think domains are too different for this analogy to apply. When building bridge civil engineer knows exatly the environment wher it will stand and pretty much knows all the likely variations of it. Software engineer? Not even close. I'd argue, that sofware solutions are _more_ robust given all the uncertainty.
_delirium 15y ago
How long would a civil engineer be employed if he refused to use proven techniques and complained that he was not having enough fun on the latest bridge project? That's actually a common aspiration! You can't experiment a lot in a low-level job, but lots of people in the bridge-engineering business wish they had more leeway to experiment with new solutions, even if it wasn't quite at the Frank-Lloyd-Wright or Calatrava level of experimentation. This usually gets blamed on the bifurcation between big-name-architect vs. just-implement-it civil engineer, splitting a role that was more historically integrated between the design/engineering. Also, some blame it on crushing layers of government bureaucracy/regulation.
- shasta 15y ago
  This is also why you'll find bridges that are under capacity. Some engineer was experimenting with a design he didn't fully understand.
  - ryanklee 15y ago
    Come on. Citation please. That's a pretty wild assertion.
    - gaius 15y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Bridge_(London)#Resonance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Bridge_(London)#Reso...
      - ryanklee 15y ago
        Interesting information, but it doesn't support the assertion made by parent that experimentation has (often, it seems implied) been the root cause of poor bridge design implementation.
drumdance 15y ago
What an individual programmer or even a team does may not qualify as engineering, but the infrastructure that has evolved over the last 30 years provides something approaching the reliability of the Brooklyn Bridge. One nice thing about software right now is an "engineer" can build on the code created by tens of thousands of other "engineers."

dap 15y ago

Don't paint us all with one brush. I suspect there's a significant bias in observation here because it's the sexy, fun stuff that everyone hears about. There are lots of people taking the profession seriously, but many of them are behind corporate walls or just not focused on making their work look flashy.

click170 15y ago

I think the problem comes from defining what 'grown up' is, because in my experience it changes depending on who you ask (corporate employee vs consultant).

randomdata 15y ago

I'm not certain we know enough about the domain to say the profession can grow up. We're still building bridges by placing downed trees across rivers. It works, well even, but we're still trying to build a multilane causeway and it is going to take a lot more trial and error to get there. I believe it is a good thing that we have people working with all types of mentalities. People building software to power airplanes can use the downed tree and know it is going to work, even if it is not pretty and requires a lot of extra effort. People building web startups can experiment with the cutting edge technology and see how it fares, slowly passing the good back to the more conservative groups. I think we're pretty lucky that we, as an industry, don't need to completely grow up. It keeps us constantly trying new ideas, some of which are good.

wladimir 15y ago
Completely agreed. Software engineering is not mature yet itself, so pretending to be all-mature about it by sticking to 30-year old rigid "best practices" can be counter-productive at best. People sometimes forget that new techniques might be more robust and safe than old ones, as various insights have been gained over the years. Your other point is also good. The technology to choose depends on the domain. Web startups and airplanes/weapons being the extremes. There is no feelgood overall advice that applies to everyone.

yxhuvud 15y ago

The profession will grow up as the tools mature. The reason engineers don't use new flashy techniques for bridge building is that there isn't that much happening[]. [] For the standard everyday bridge. New techniques and solutions are tried out for exotic bridges - bridges for high speed trains and such.

rimantas 15y ago

I think domains are too different for this analogy to apply. When building bridge civil engineer knows exatly the environment wher it will stand and pretty much knows all the likely variations of it. Software engineer? Not even close. I'd argue, that sofware solutions are _more_ robust given all the uncertainty.

_delirium 15y ago

How long would a civil engineer be employed if he refused to use proven techniques and complained that he was not having enough fun on the latest bridge project? That's actually a common aspiration! You can't experiment a lot in a low-level job, but lots of people in the bridge-engineering business wish they had more leeway to experiment with new solutions, even if it wasn't quite at the Frank-Lloyd-Wright or Calatrava level of experimentation. This usually gets blamed on the bifurcation between big-name-architect vs. just-implement-it civil engineer, splitting a role that was more historically integrated between the design/engineering. Also, some blame it on crushing layers of government bureaucracy/regulation.

shasta 15y ago
This is also why you'll find bridges that are under capacity. Some engineer was experimenting with a design he didn't fully understand.
- ryanklee 15y ago
  Come on. Citation please. That's a pretty wild assertion.
  - gaius 15y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Bridge_(London)#Resonance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Bridge_(London)#Reso...
    - ryanklee 15y ago
      Interesting information, but it doesn't support the assertion made by parent that experimentation has (often, it seems implied) been the root cause of poor bridge design implementation.

drumdance 15y ago

What an individual programmer or even a team does may not qualify as engineering, but the infrastructure that has evolved over the last 30 years provides something approaching the reliability of the Brooklyn Bridge. One nice thing about software right now is an "engineer" can build on the code created by tens of thousands of other "engineers."