3 ms·

So what is going to happen when you are asked to design (or dare I say "engineer") a system of some sort from scratch? Say, an engine or a component of an engin

So what is going to happen when you are asked to design (or dare I say "engineer") a system of some sort from scratch? Say, an engine or a component of an engine or a complete new machine? That is engineering. What you described sounds like the duties of a technician or a mechanic. That is not engineering.

angersock 15y ago
Firstly: A designer is allowed to come up with whatever they want. An engineer is subject to constraints, most notably: does it work, is it safe, and is it cheap. That last value does not always mean money--what is the cost if the design goes wrong, or if others have to maintain it, and so forth. This is the popular notion of "engineering": that a stoic engineer sits down, sliderule or vim in the one hand and coffeepot in the other, and sits up into the wee hours of the night scrawling schematics onto a sheet of paper or typing into a VT101, only to go pound rivets or machine code the following morning with only the aid of his throbbing turgid member--this is absurd! Secondly: In your case, for an engine, I would ask for details about the weight, cost, power output, speed, time, maintenance lifecycle, and predicted loadings of the engine. Then, I would sit down and blackbox the inputs and outputs. Then, I would go and figure out mechanisms to accomplish each box. Then, I would look up the values for those materials--honestly, do you expect me to come up with the vibration amplitude of a forged 316 stainless shaft of x length and y rpm myself? You don't want me to not use tables for that! Those things--the "engineering"--done, I'd get to the actual "design" work: how do I shape these mechanisms, how do I get them to fit in a box in the size we decided on, etc. To hold you to your own standard: Would you write your own web stack? Okay, would you write your own protocol? Your own compiler? Linker? OS? Hardware? We stand on the shoulders of giants--I am no less an engineer for using reference tables and formula than you are for using Redis/Rails/libc/Ruby/Python/etc. The lack of invention? That's the sign of maturity.
- tonyarkles 15y ago
  I have done all of these things, and I know when it's appropriate and when it's not. The trick isn't that I can "come up with the vibration amplitude of a forged 316 stainless shaft", but that I know how I could do that. Over and over, I've seen the effects of failing to understand the abstractions (formula tables) that people are using to develop software. It's that fundamental base understanding that, in my opinion, can propel someone from pretty good to exceptionally awesome.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

angersock 15y ago

Firstly: A designer is allowed to come up with whatever they want. An engineer is subject to constraints, most notably: does it work, is it safe, and is it cheap. That last value does not always mean money--what is the cost if the design goes wrong, or if others have to maintain it, and so forth. This is the popular notion of "engineering": that a stoic engineer sits down, sliderule or vim in the one hand and coffeepot in the other, and sits up into the wee hours of the night scrawling schematics onto a sheet of paper or typing into a VT101, only to go pound rivets or machine code the following morning with only the aid of his throbbing turgid member--this is absurd! Secondly: In your case, for an engine, I would ask for details about the weight, cost, power output, speed, time, maintenance lifecycle, and predicted loadings of the engine. Then, I would sit down and blackbox the inputs and outputs. Then, I would go and figure out mechanisms to accomplish each box. Then, I would look up the values for those materials--honestly, do you expect me to come up with the vibration amplitude of a forged 316 stainless shaft of x length and y rpm myself? You don't want me to not use tables for that! Those things--the "engineering"--done, I'd get to the actual "design" work: how do I shape these mechanisms, how do I get them to fit in a box in the size we decided on, etc. To hold you to your own standard: Would you write your own web stack? Okay, would you write your own protocol? Your own compiler? Linker? OS? Hardware? We stand on the shoulders of giants--I am no less an engineer for using reference tables and formula than you are for using Redis/Rails/libc/Ruby/Python/etc. The lack of invention? That's the sign of maturity.

tonyarkles 15y ago
I have done all of these things, and I know when it's appropriate and when it's not. The trick isn't that I can "come up with the vibration amplitude of a forged 316 stainless shaft", but that I know how I could do that. Over and over, I've seen the effects of failing to understand the abstractions (formula tables) that people are using to develop software. It's that fundamental base understanding that, in my opinion, can propel someone from pretty good to exceptionally awesome.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]