3 ms·

"All other engineering disciplines are ultimately limited to building things in (at most) 3 euclidean dimensions." Trying to diminish engineering disciplines t

"All other engineering disciplines are ultimately limited to building things in (at most) 3 euclidean dimensions." Trying to diminish engineering disciplines that have existed for millennia by imposing an arbitrary constraint of "3 euclidean" is pretty wank. Let's drop silly constraints. Do you have any idea how complicated concrete is? It's just sand, aggregate, cement and water. Exothermic reaction. Job done. Let's look at wood ... the stuff is a bundle of fibres and stuff and yet we build huge structures out of it. Who on earth knows how or why plywood works? Britain had several all wooden aircraft during WWII - the Mosquito was so good that Herman Goering declared that it was worth two kills. Steel - its just iron with other stuff. Software engineering is growing up gradually but please don't be a dick towards people who practice disciplines that invented things and concepts you rely on and live within. For example the concept of a token that allows you to do something exclusively - " exclusive lock" - was popularised by early railways. A single track should have only one train on it and after a few accidents the idea of an exclusive token was "invented" that could be passed across to the next exclusive user. When you say hyperbolic, you should be aware of how close that is to hyperbole.

noosphr 2y ago
Not sure where you're getting that from my post. The point is that all other engineering disciplines don't have enough design space to make a true mess of their projects. Software by comparison hasn't been limited in its design space since the first super computers started having gigabytes of ram memory in the late 1980s. That doesn't mean that either discipline is better or worse, it means they are different. Other than math there is no other field which has as much freedom when it comes to basic design choices as software engineering, and math proofs are even more of a mess than software programs, to the point that pretty much every non-formally verified proof is wrong in some way. Or to put another way: would railways be more or less complex if we allowed them to be embedded in a higher dimensional space instead of being essentially a 2d network on the earth surface? If you don't think so I'd like you to think about what a train schedule would look like on hyper graphs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergraph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergraph
- callc 2y ago
  I say this as someone who loves software: software is not special. Every discipline has infinite depth. Railways in 2D may seem simple but there the simplicity may be intentional. Just like when you write software that runs things like planes, trains, or medical devices, all of a sudden you’re writing in C, without recursion, without function pointers, without using the heap, etc. Look at the concord airplane. A mess of a project. Look at anything in biology and human health. The complexity is unimaginable compared to software. Edit: reduced emotions
  - antoniojtorres 2y ago
    I don’t think the comment was meant derisive like you and the other commenter are interpreting… relax?
    - callc 2y ago
      Thanks, I edited to assume the best interpretation of the thread. Since I want programming to be inclusive and not have a bad rap publicly, when a peer says “software is better than all other disciplines because of X, Y, Z” I want to convince them otherwise. As a leader and teacher with more grey hair every day, I feel this responsibility
      - noosphr 2y ago
        >As a leader and teacher with more grey hair every day, I feel this responsibility You should probably do less of that since: 1). That's not what any of my posts said. 2). My degree says mathematical physics and not computer science or software engineering. 3). A field where you're tone policed by the tone deaf is the opposite of welcoming and inclusive.
        lovich 2y ago
        Since I’m already in the thread defending you against the other poster, I’ll add here U/callc appears to be reacting to the public perception of how this thread would read externally, you appear to be reacting based on hard logic, which is unpalatable to most of the public. I think you two are talking past each other

noosphr 2y ago

Not sure where you're getting that from my post. The point is that all other engineering disciplines don't have enough design space to make a true mess of their projects. Software by comparison hasn't been limited in its design space since the first super computers started having gigabytes of ram memory in the late 1980s. That doesn't mean that either discipline is better or worse, it means they are different. Other than math there is no other field which has as much freedom when it comes to basic design choices as software engineering, and math proofs are even more of a mess than software programs, to the point that pretty much every non-formally verified proof is wrong in some way. Or to put another way: would railways be more or less complex if we allowed them to be embedded in a higher dimensional space instead of being essentially a 2d network on the earth surface? If you don't think so I'd like you to think about what a train schedule would look like on hyper graphs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergraph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergraph

callc 2y ago
I say this as someone who loves software: software is not special. Every discipline has infinite depth. Railways in 2D may seem simple but there the simplicity may be intentional. Just like when you write software that runs things like planes, trains, or medical devices, all of a sudden you’re writing in C, without recursion, without function pointers, without using the heap, etc. Look at the concord airplane. A mess of a project. Look at anything in biology and human health. The complexity is unimaginable compared to software. Edit: reduced emotions
- antoniojtorres 2y ago
  I don’t think the comment was meant derisive like you and the other commenter are interpreting… relax?
  - callc 2y ago
    Thanks, I edited to assume the best interpretation of the thread. Since I want programming to be inclusive and not have a bad rap publicly, when a peer says “software is better than all other disciplines because of X, Y, Z” I want to convince them otherwise. As a leader and teacher with more grey hair every day, I feel this responsibility
    - noosphr 2y ago
      >As a leader and teacher with more grey hair every day, I feel this responsibility You should probably do less of that since: 1). That's not what any of my posts said. 2). My degree says mathematical physics and not computer science or software engineering. 3). A field where you're tone policed by the tone deaf is the opposite of welcoming and inclusive.
      - lovich 2y ago
        Since I’m already in the thread defending you against the other poster, I’ll add here U/callc appears to be reacting to the public perception of how this thread would read externally, you appear to be reacting based on hard logic, which is unpalatable to most of the public. I think you two are talking past each other