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Do the engineering professions (civil, chemical, etc.) have the same issues? There are a lot of parallels between the type of work the programmers and engineers

Do the engineering professions (civil, chemical, etc.) have the same issues? There are a lot of parallels between the type of work the programmers and engineers do. So, what is the difference?

jacques_chester 13y ago
Other engineering disciplines tend to evolve at a more measured pace and have a stronger institutional memory. They also tend to have structured pathways for taking a fresh grad and moulding them into thoughtful, cautious masters of the problem and solution domains. In our field, technologies largely align on generations. Older coders have deep experience with tech X, throwing that away seems dumb. So they don't follow up on tech Y. Meanwhile, younger coders, frustrated with the accumulated cruft of X, seize the freshness of tech Y and become masters at that instead. One day, along comes tech Z ... This cycle has already appeared in Java or Perl -> PHP -> RoR -> Node.
- jared314 13y ago
  Having now gone through several cycles, I partially agree with your view on the tech side. But, I just do not believe things evolve at a slower pace in other fields. Especially the fields that have used computers to enhance their efforts. How have the CAD and CAM tools transformed the classic structured mentoring process? How has more accurate software simulation changed the view of "experience" in older workers? I'll stop asking questions now.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    Civil and structural engineers don't periodically reinvent mudbrick and then go about proclaiming it as a revolution that will sweep non-agile muck like concrete away.
- UK-AL 13y ago
  Java has completely different target market to PHP developers. So moving Java to PHP never happened.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    Java has been a server side tech for almost as long as Perl has. And Java wasn't always the enterprise thundergod we know and respect today. But in general, sure. It's not as common as other migrations.
sentenza 13y ago
Well, at least in the case of electrical and mechanical engineering, no company can survive burning through grads so fast. For one thing, the number of engineers available is more limited, because of the (relatively) reduced sexiness of those fields. Also, if your product has to work for 10, 20, maybe 30 years, you have quite an incentive to retain the people that know it in detail in order to cope with the inevitable non-trivial long term support issues.
hga 13y ago
The traditional big three auto companies hire young MIT EECS graduates for EE work and fire them fairly young.

Do the engineering professions (civil, chemical, etc.) have the same issues? There are a lot of parallels between the type of work the programmers and engineers do. So, what is the difference?

jacques_chester 13y ago

Other engineering disciplines tend to evolve at a more measured pace and have a stronger institutional memory. They also tend to have structured pathways for taking a fresh grad and moulding them into thoughtful, cautious masters of the problem and solution domains. In our field, technologies largely align on generations. Older coders have deep experience with tech X, throwing that away seems dumb. So they don't follow up on tech Y. Meanwhile, younger coders, frustrated with the accumulated cruft of X, seize the freshness of tech Y and become masters at that instead. One day, along comes tech Z ... This cycle has already appeared in Java or Perl -> PHP -> RoR -> Node.

jared314 13y ago
Having now gone through several cycles, I partially agree with your view on the tech side. But, I just do not believe things evolve at a slower pace in other fields. Especially the fields that have used computers to enhance their efforts. How have the CAD and CAM tools transformed the classic structured mentoring process? How has more accurate software simulation changed the view of "experience" in older workers? I'll stop asking questions now.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  Civil and structural engineers don't periodically reinvent mudbrick and then go about proclaiming it as a revolution that will sweep non-agile muck like concrete away.
UK-AL 13y ago
Java has completely different target market to PHP developers. So moving Java to PHP never happened.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  Java has been a server side tech for almost as long as Perl has. And Java wasn't always the enterprise thundergod we know and respect today. But in general, sure. It's not as common as other migrations.

sentenza 13y ago

Well, at least in the case of electrical and mechanical engineering, no company can survive burning through grads so fast. For one thing, the number of engineers available is more limited, because of the (relatively) reduced sexiness of those fields. Also, if your product has to work for 10, 20, maybe 30 years, you have quite an incentive to retain the people that know it in detail in order to cope with the inevitable non-trivial long term support issues.

hga 13y ago

The traditional big three auto companies hire young MIT EECS graduates for EE work and fire them fairly young.