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It is sad to see that IEEE is becoming the discovery channel of engineering.

by ilayn 2y ago

GuB-42 2y ago
Why are you saying this? It is a message from people who program robots to those who design robots. Both groups are (mostly) made up of professional engineers for which API design affect their job. It is not an article intended to those who know nothing about robotics and are unlikely to become roboticists as it would be the case for a "discovery channel" type article. Note that I have nothing against pop science, quite the opposite actually. But this isn't that.
- ModernMech 2y ago
  > It is a message from people who program robots to those who design robots. I thought it was a message from someone who designs robots to someone who programs robots. The author says they are an ME and mostly self taught. In my experience, self taught MEs are not adept robot programmers or programmers in general. If I may try to parse the subtext here, this is a post by a ME who is helping manage/direct a startup of recent college grads, and they are frustrated with ROS because you basically have to be a Linux network admin and skilled C/C++ programmer to get anywhere with ROS. MEs especially find it frustrating because they just want to do robots, but to use ROS they have to be expert linux console hackers and it's just not a skillset they have. Same is true for the fresh out of college CS majors -- my students who are seniors, Master's, and even some PhD students have trouble with it. So what I see here is someone expressing that frustration of how tooling is in the robotics ecosystem is not accessible. The reason this is a "discovery channel" treatment of the topic is because we're not talking about it at that level. We're talking about it at this distilled, filtered, high-minded perspective that is above the weeds, when really we should be digging in the dirt talking about exactly the problem here.
- ilayn 2y ago
  I am in that group you mentioned and this is not even a bad take. They might have been trying to imply ROS but that's also a very much not a well-targeted criticism either. Robotics is not bunch of humanoids moving their attached manipulators. Next; this article appears in IEEE spectrum not Quanta. I want higher quality from IEEE as was the case for decades and it is not a pop science avenue. Good pop science is hard and other places do it much better. This is just a mediocre blog article found somehow its way into IEEE which is very concerning about the quality of IEEE spectrum.
rbanffy 2y ago
Maybe, and I think this is a good thing. We want more engineers in the world, or, at least, more people who, when they see a problem, or something that's not perfect, bet bothered to the point of finding a good fix. You can train someone every other skill but that one - the urge to look for what can be improved, and to improve it - is the most valuable an engineer can have, and it doesn't apply to engineering alone.
globalnode 2y ago
gatekeeping?
- ilayn 2y ago
  Did you pay attention to what IEEE stands for?

It is sad to see that IEEE is becoming the discovery channel of engineering.

by ilayn 2y ago

It is sad to see that IEEE is becoming the discovery channel of engineering.

Why are you saying this? It is a message from people who program robots to those who design robots. Both groups are (mostly) made up of professional engineers for which API design affect their job. It is not an article intended to those who know nothing about robotics and are unlikely to become roboticists as it would be the case for a "discovery channel" type article. Note that I have nothing against pop science, quite the opposite actually. But this isn't that.

ModernMech 2y ago
> It is a message from people who program robots to those who design robots. I thought it was a message from someone who designs robots to someone who programs robots. The author says they are an ME and mostly self taught. In my experience, self taught MEs are not adept robot programmers or programmers in general. If I may try to parse the subtext here, this is a post by a ME who is helping manage/direct a startup of recent college grads, and they are frustrated with ROS because you basically have to be a Linux network admin and skilled C/C++ programmer to get anywhere with ROS. MEs especially find it frustrating because they just want to do robots, but to use ROS they have to be expert linux console hackers and it's just not a skillset they have. Same is true for the fresh out of college CS majors -- my students who are seniors, Master's, and even some PhD students have trouble with it. So what I see here is someone expressing that frustration of how tooling is in the robotics ecosystem is not accessible. The reason this is a "discovery channel" treatment of the topic is because we're not talking about it at that level. We're talking about it at this distilled, filtered, high-minded perspective that is above the weeds, when really we should be digging in the dirt talking about exactly the problem here.
ilayn 2y ago
I am in that group you mentioned and this is not even a bad take. They might have been trying to imply ROS but that's also a very much not a well-targeted criticism either. Robotics is not bunch of humanoids moving their attached manipulators. Next; this article appears in IEEE spectrum not Quanta. I want higher quality from IEEE as was the case for decades and it is not a pop science avenue. Good pop science is hard and other places do it much better. This is just a mediocre blog article found somehow its way into IEEE which is very concerning about the quality of IEEE spectrum.

rbanffy 2y ago

Maybe, and I think this is a good thing. We want more engineers in the world, or, at least, more people who, when they see a problem, or something that's not perfect, bet bothered to the point of finding a good fix. You can train someone every other skill but that one - the urge to look for what can be improved, and to improve it - is the most valuable an engineer can have, and it doesn't apply to engineering alone.

globalnode 2y ago

gatekeeping?

ilayn 2y ago
Did you pay attention to what IEEE stands for?