5 ms·

I think "engineer" isn't really the correct word to use for the artisans who build much of the tooling used by most companies. An engineer either wears a strip

by cduzz 3y ago

I think "engineer" isn't really the correct word to use for the artisans who build much of the tooling used by most companies. An engineer either wears a striped hat and drives a train, or, went to a credentialed school and passed a bunch of test and is allowed to sign documents that state "this thing, if built this way, won't collapse and kill people." It is expected that an engineer can predict with reasonable accuracy the expense and timeline of a project, and how to maintain the resulting thing, without resorting to voodoo like "scrum velocity." In large part that's because engineers stick to doing things that are well understood and predictable, and if there's risk they resolve the risk before undertaking the project. (Is there bedrock over here upon which to build a foundation? I don't know; let's find out first!). Sure, there are engineering disasters even today -- buildings that unexpectedly lean over and door/wall things that unexpectedly fly off the side of airplanes, but those are typically organizational / process problems not "engineering doesn't work" problems.

reactordev 3y ago
“engineers stick to doing things that are well understood and predictable” I’m calling BS on this. If this were true, we’d still be a ground species. Engineering has been and will always be about creating something electrical, mechanical, computerized, or all, that solves a problem. Understood or not. Engineers are not oracles. They can not predict whether a tower built in Italy will eventually begin to lean due to erosion. They can not predict that a steel beam rated for 300T of force would break at 180T. They can not predict a rogue developer removing a package from underneath their dependency tree. You can give estimates all you want but you are still guessing. If engineers were as you say they are, we would never have delays, we would never have traffic jams, we would never have crap software, we would never have flight.
- practicemaths 3y ago
  “Engineering is the art of modelling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyse so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance.” - Dr. AR Dykes
  - reactordev 3y ago
    Ah the eloquence of Dr. AR Dykes, perfectly said. Thank you.
    - noboostforyou 3y ago
      I am partial to the following one about computers: "A cpu is literally a rock that we tricked into thinking."
- cduzz 3y ago
  Engineers manage risk and cost. They certainly make mistakes, like those couple buildings that are famously leaning over in SF and NYC, or the citycorp center where they got the wind sheer loads wrong and had to hot patch the building. But looking at the malarkey that goes on in "software engineering" or whatever -- clearly not engineering, at least not where I've seen it. Engineering: a process of repeatably solving an understood problem predictably. Craft: a process of solving an understood problem. Science: a process of solving a problem without an exactly understood outcome. Art: a process of working. These are all made-up definitions. I'd expect a software engineer to give me a system that locally caches and verifies distribution artifacts and validates changes -- a craftsperson who gives me a tool chain that yeets goo from the internet and builds on that without validation is not, in fact, an engineer. They could be quite practiced at the art of building working systems, but they're not managing risk....
  - dehrmann 3y ago
    What makes software engineering special is the systems are more complex and are cheaper to test and break. You get a completely different engineering culture when you can roll back a bad change after seeing it fail during the canary push. That, and what's usually on the line is money, not life. I'd feel a lot better making a $1M mistake than making a mistake that killed someone.
  - ExoticPearTree 3y ago
    > Engineering: a process of repeatably solving an understood problem predictably. We call it help desk, not engineering.
  - gottorf 3y ago
    > Engineers manage risk and cost. "Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands."
robocat 3y ago
> An engineer [] went to a credentialed school and passed a bunch of test and is allowed to sign documents that state "this thing, if built this way, won't collapse and kill people." Ahhh - that old craptacular definition. You completely ignore mechanical engineers, chemical engineers, electrical & electronics engineers. Not all engineers make bridges. Secondly, the implied cause and effect even within civil engineering is a fantasy. Signatures on documents by credentialed engineers doesn't prevent disasters as you noted: Bridges fall down, buildings burn. Read the engineering reports on civil engineering disasters, and look at the consequences for the engineers involved. You do some handwaving about organizational/process problems, but actually that is the key to safe engineering. Organisations deliver engineering projects and they do it across jurisdictional borders using insurance and liability and with a variety of other means that work: "signatures don't prevent disasters". Lockheed Martin's skunk-works and SpaceX are real engineering. Any good definition of engineering needs to encompass an extremely wide variety of activities. Engineering is compromise. I have no love for Musk but him saying build that actuator for less than $5k is actually true engineering: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39085892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39085892 I would like to know the psychology behind why people wish to believe credentialed signatures are so powerful? Maybe a cross between two concepts #1: "that individual engineers run the world" and #2: "that retributive punishment of individuals works as a deterrent". I think concept #1 comes from the egotist idea of most engineer-types that we are the center of everything (I need a whole article to explain the concept). I think concept #2 is related to beliefs about the value of incarceration and also punishment beliefs derived from religion (especially in the USA where prisons are not fixing problems?). Edit: issue #3: the idea that we should make rules about what words mean. It takes a certain worldview to think words should be defined rather than evolve (or worse that words should be part of a justice system)
- cduzz 3y ago
  > Ahhh - that old craptacular definition. You completely ignore mechanical engineers, chemical engineers, electrical & electronics engineers. Not all engineers make bridges. I suppose you've got an engineering degree in pedantic engineering? Engineers manage cost and risk. The skunk-works stuff is marginally "science" not "engineering" given the relatively large budgets and relative lack of "we know this works." Cern is similarly an enormous engineering enterprise in that it's a huge stack of "we know this works" in service of "we're not sure what this will do" A discussion of how "software engineers" deliver projects with neither cost or risk as part of the process implies, to me, that they're not engineers.

by cduzz 3y ago

reactordev 3y ago

“engineers stick to doing things that are well understood and predictable” I’m calling BS on this. If this were true, we’d still be a ground species. Engineering has been and will always be about creating something electrical, mechanical, computerized, or all, that solves a problem. Understood or not. Engineers are not oracles. They can not predict whether a tower built in Italy will eventually begin to lean due to erosion. They can not predict that a steel beam rated for 300T of force would break at 180T. They can not predict a rogue developer removing a package from underneath their dependency tree. You can give estimates all you want but you are still guessing. If engineers were as you say they are, we would never have delays, we would never have traffic jams, we would never have crap software, we would never have flight.

practicemaths 3y ago
“Engineering is the art of modelling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyse so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance.” - Dr. AR Dykes
- reactordev 3y ago
  Ah the eloquence of Dr. AR Dykes, perfectly said. Thank you.
  - noboostforyou 3y ago
    I am partial to the following one about computers: "A cpu is literally a rock that we tricked into thinking."
cduzz 3y ago
Engineers manage risk and cost. They certainly make mistakes, like those couple buildings that are famously leaning over in SF and NYC, or the citycorp center where they got the wind sheer loads wrong and had to hot patch the building. But looking at the malarkey that goes on in "software engineering" or whatever -- clearly not engineering, at least not where I've seen it. Engineering: a process of repeatably solving an understood problem predictably. Craft: a process of solving an understood problem. Science: a process of solving a problem without an exactly understood outcome. Art: a process of working. These are all made-up definitions. I'd expect a software engineer to give me a system that locally caches and verifies distribution artifacts and validates changes -- a craftsperson who gives me a tool chain that yeets goo from the internet and builds on that without validation is not, in fact, an engineer. They could be quite practiced at the art of building working systems, but they're not managing risk....
- dehrmann 3y ago
  What makes software engineering special is the systems are more complex and are cheaper to test and break. You get a completely different engineering culture when you can roll back a bad change after seeing it fail during the canary push. That, and what's usually on the line is money, not life. I'd feel a lot better making a $1M mistake than making a mistake that killed someone.
- ExoticPearTree 3y ago
  > Engineering: a process of repeatably solving an understood problem predictably. We call it help desk, not engineering.
- gottorf 3y ago
  > Engineers manage risk and cost. "Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands."

robocat 3y ago

> An engineer [] went to a credentialed school and passed a bunch of test and is allowed to sign documents that state "this thing, if built this way, won't collapse and kill people." Ahhh - that old craptacular definition. You completely ignore mechanical engineers, chemical engineers, electrical & electronics engineers. Not all engineers make bridges. Secondly, the implied cause and effect even within civil engineering is a fantasy. Signatures on documents by credentialed engineers doesn't prevent disasters as you noted: Bridges fall down, buildings burn. Read the engineering reports on civil engineering disasters, and look at the consequences for the engineers involved. You do some handwaving about organizational/process problems, but actually that is the key to safe engineering. Organisations deliver engineering projects and they do it across jurisdictional borders using insurance and liability and with a variety of other means that work: "signatures don't prevent disasters". Lockheed Martin's skunk-works and SpaceX are real engineering. Any good definition of engineering needs to encompass an extremely wide variety of activities. Engineering is compromise. I have no love for Musk but him saying build that actuator for less than $5k is actually true engineering: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39085892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39085892 I would like to know the psychology behind why people wish to believe credentialed signatures are so powerful? Maybe a cross between two concepts #1: "that individual engineers run the world" and #2: "that retributive punishment of individuals works as a deterrent". I think concept #1 comes from the egotist idea of most engineer-types that we are the center of everything (I need a whole article to explain the concept). I think concept #2 is related to beliefs about the value of incarceration and also punishment beliefs derived from religion (especially in the USA where prisons are not fixing problems?). Edit: issue #3: the idea that we should make rules about what words mean. It takes a certain worldview to think words should be defined rather than evolve (or worse that words should be part of a justice system)

cduzz 3y ago
> Ahhh - that old craptacular definition. You completely ignore mechanical engineers, chemical engineers, electrical & electronics engineers. Not all engineers make bridges. I suppose you've got an engineering degree in pedantic engineering? Engineers manage cost and risk. The skunk-works stuff is marginally "science" not "engineering" given the relatively large budgets and relative lack of "we know this works." Cern is similarly an enormous engineering enterprise in that it's a huge stack of "we know this works" in service of "we're not sure what this will do" A discussion of how "software engineers" deliver projects with neither cost or risk as part of the process implies, to me, that they're not engineers.