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Do civil engineers need to be able to personally manufacture prestressed concrete? Or do they need to know the properties of materials and how to test their des

by panarky 1mo ago

Do civil engineers need to be able to personally manufacture prestressed concrete? Or do they need to know the properties of materials and how to test their designs?

archagon 1mo ago
Do you think that programming is analogous to pouring concrete???
- Gud 1mo ago
  Manufacturing concrete is not the same as pouring it.
  - archagon 1mo ago
    A distinction without a difference.
lesostep 1mo ago
As a past civil engineer, I can't manufacture concrete. But I still could calculate and write an electrical design project and draw all necessary plans and schemes without touching PC once – if I have a ruler, few pens and enough time (I would have to reference standards, but I did have most standards in print version) I doubt your metaphor really fit. Was manufacturing ever an engineer job?
- panarky 1mo ago
  Many specialties contribute to the manufacture of prestressed concrete. Materials scientists, chemical engineers, metallurgical engineers, mechanical engineers, structural engineers, tooling engineers to design casting beds, quality control engineers, etc. But in the early days of prestressed concrete (1920, 1930), a single civil engineer performed all of these functions. The point is that the role of the modern civil engineer has changed and specialized over the decades. You can be a very competent civil engineer without having the knowledge or experience needed to perform every specialty. Just because our ancestors in the 1940s handwrote binary sequences, and in the 1950s they handwrote assembly, and in the 1960s they handwrote FORTRAN, doesn't mean that today's software engineers need to be able to do any of that.
  - jmchuster 1mo ago
    They don't need to because that's usually not what the job calls for, but I would think most people who call themselves software engineers believe they would be able to work at a job where they wrote FORTRAN instead of Python. It's just another programming language, you just have to spend a month to learn it. Assembly is just another programing language. Opcodes is just assembly without syntactic sugar. But of course that's not what my job calls for today, but if it did, it's not really any different in my mind from any new job where I'm doing something different, but just applying my software skills slightly differently.

by panarky 1mo ago

Do civil engineers need to be able to personally manufacture prestressed concrete? Or do they need to know the properties of materials and how to test their designs?

archagon 1mo ago

Do you think that programming is analogous to pouring concrete???

Gud 1mo ago
Manufacturing concrete is not the same as pouring it.
- archagon 1mo ago
  A distinction without a difference.

lesostep 1mo ago

As a past civil engineer, I can't manufacture concrete. But I still could calculate and write an electrical design project and draw all necessary plans and schemes without touching PC once – if I have a ruler, few pens and enough time (I would have to reference standards, but I did have most standards in print version) I doubt your metaphor really fit. Was manufacturing ever an engineer job?

panarky 1mo ago
Many specialties contribute to the manufacture of prestressed concrete. Materials scientists, chemical engineers, metallurgical engineers, mechanical engineers, structural engineers, tooling engineers to design casting beds, quality control engineers, etc. But in the early days of prestressed concrete (1920, 1930), a single civil engineer performed all of these functions. The point is that the role of the modern civil engineer has changed and specialized over the decades. You can be a very competent civil engineer without having the knowledge or experience needed to perform every specialty. Just because our ancestors in the 1940s handwrote binary sequences, and in the 1950s they handwrote assembly, and in the 1960s they handwrote FORTRAN, doesn't mean that today's software engineers need to be able to do any of that.
- jmchuster 1mo ago
  They don't need to because that's usually not what the job calls for, but I would think most people who call themselves software engineers believe they would be able to work at a job where they wrote FORTRAN instead of Python. It's just another programming language, you just have to spend a month to learn it. Assembly is just another programing language. Opcodes is just assembly without syntactic sugar. But of course that's not what my job calls for today, but if it did, it's not really any different in my mind from any new job where I'm doing something different, but just applying my software skills slightly differently.