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Hi Walter! You have (evidently) a tonne of experience in the aviation industry. Is there anything you noticed the 'engineer's engineers' had in common? What mad

by xNeil 4y ago

Hi Walter! You have (evidently) a tonne of experience in the aviation industry. Is there anything you noticed the 'engineer's engineers' had in common? What made them such great engineers. I was looking to a career in Aerospace Engineering - but it's an interest. I'm still in college, but I'm not sure if it's what I want to do. Regardless - what do you think makes an engineer an engineer's engineer?

WalterBright 4y ago
It's simple - they loved engineering. It was not just a job. It oozed from their core. They'd have done it for free. I've known many engineers who were in it for the money. While they could get the job done, their heart wasn't in it, and it showed. I'm sure you can pick them out in your organization. Burt, who was in his 60s, was always excited to show me some new way of doing things, showing off his notebook, showing me his (then useless) slide rule, etc. He was also an endless source of engineering tales which he'd tell with relish. So was Erv, though Erv didn't work on the 747. And they were happy to tell this stuff to me, because it was exactly what I wanted to be doing. On the software side, I haven't met John Carmack, but I suspect that working with him would be a similar experience. Woz too, obviously.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  It was like that at Caltech. Caltech didn't admit people just for good grades and a high SAT score. That wasn't good enough. They were looking for people who were born scientists and engineers, people who would fearlessly look through the Gates of Hell if it would further their field. For example, students would often do a double major, with the other one AY (Astronomy). Why sign up for all that extra work? Because AY was fun fun fun, but one couldn't get a job in it. Being around people like that is tremendously fun, I was never bored. We had Carl Sagan over for dinner once, and the entire conversation was about what would life based on silicon rather than oxygen be like. There was no class in this, no homework assignment, it was simply fun. (Dr. Sagan went on to write about "silicon giraffes".) Yep, we were all nerds.
  - atonse 4y ago
    Wow thank you for those stories. I took Astronomy in addition to computer science because evidently CS wasn’t nerdy enough. (Sorry to over share my stories but I really related with yours, sans celebrities and accomplishments) My two favorite classes were cosmology (where things just bend your mind from sheer scale and spacetime effects) and another class called “life in the universe” taught by Dr. Virginia Trimble. Both of these, I had countless “what? WHAT?? did you all just hear that?” moments where you felt that you were being exposed to the most fantastical ideas. Day one, Dr. Trimble gave us a sheet with 35 assignments. She said, do any 21 of these well and you get an A. No final or requirement to attend class. Or, you can stay and also attend the lectures and you’ll learn something. Almost every assignment was as thought provoking like your silicon life form discussion. One was to change one of the universal constants (like if the gravitational force was slightly stronger or weaker etc) and describe how the universe would be different. Another was to write an Astronomy themed song/poem/short story. I wrote a short story about a boy and girl that go stargazing for a date and he tries to impress her with facts about binary stars and romance but doesn’t know that she is an Astro major and knows more but she finds his attempt endearing. Greatest classes I took. So it sounds like dinner parties were as fascinating as we’d imagine!
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      Ooh, I like the way Dr. Trimble thinks! Great story with something I never thought of.

by xNeil 4y ago

WalterBright 4y ago

It's simple - they loved engineering. It was not just a job. It oozed from their core. They'd have done it for free. I've known many engineers who were in it for the money. While they could get the job done, their heart wasn't in it, and it showed. I'm sure you can pick them out in your organization. Burt, who was in his 60s, was always excited to show me some new way of doing things, showing off his notebook, showing me his (then useless) slide rule, etc. He was also an endless source of engineering tales which he'd tell with relish. So was Erv, though Erv didn't work on the 747. And they were happy to tell this stuff to me, because it was exactly what I wanted to be doing. On the software side, I haven't met John Carmack, but I suspect that working with him would be a similar experience. Woz too, obviously.

WalterBright 4y ago
It was like that at Caltech. Caltech didn't admit people just for good grades and a high SAT score. That wasn't good enough. They were looking for people who were born scientists and engineers, people who would fearlessly look through the Gates of Hell if it would further their field. For example, students would often do a double major, with the other one AY (Astronomy). Why sign up for all that extra work? Because AY was fun fun fun, but one couldn't get a job in it. Being around people like that is tremendously fun, I was never bored. We had Carl Sagan over for dinner once, and the entire conversation was about what would life based on silicon rather than oxygen be like. There was no class in this, no homework assignment, it was simply fun. (Dr. Sagan went on to write about "silicon giraffes".) Yep, we were all nerds.
- atonse 4y ago
  Wow thank you for those stories. I took Astronomy in addition to computer science because evidently CS wasn’t nerdy enough. (Sorry to over share my stories but I really related with yours, sans celebrities and accomplishments) My two favorite classes were cosmology (where things just bend your mind from sheer scale and spacetime effects) and another class called “life in the universe” taught by Dr. Virginia Trimble. Both of these, I had countless “what? WHAT?? did you all just hear that?” moments where you felt that you were being exposed to the most fantastical ideas. Day one, Dr. Trimble gave us a sheet with 35 assignments. She said, do any 21 of these well and you get an A. No final or requirement to attend class. Or, you can stay and also attend the lectures and you’ll learn something. Almost every assignment was as thought provoking like your silicon life form discussion. One was to change one of the universal constants (like if the gravitational force was slightly stronger or weaker etc) and describe how the universe would be different. Another was to write an Astronomy themed song/poem/short story. I wrote a short story about a boy and girl that go stargazing for a date and he tries to impress her with facts about binary stars and romance but doesn’t know that she is an Astro major and knows more but she finds his attempt endearing. Greatest classes I took. So it sounds like dinner parties were as fascinating as we’d imagine!
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Ooh, I like the way Dr. Trimble thinks! Great story with something I never thought of.