At 42 I realized I think like an Engineer, not a Scientist or Writer. 7

[KennethUdut]

I'm 42 years old and always had a fascination with science. I am always trying to figure how things work because people always hand me their broken stuff to fix. Broken computers, appliances, even broken relationships and fixing misunderstandings among people.

Yet I'd always hit the same brick walls when talking to science lovers online; a roadblock of me "thinking different"; having multiple answers to the same questions when they wanted a single =.

Over the past week, I've read the ONLY two books I could find in my library about a philosophy of Engineering; The Essential Engineer and Why Things Break, plus I found a PDF scan of "Definition of the Engineering Method" - only 76 pages but the view on Heuristics was mindblowing to me.

In all three cases, they explained the differences between science and engineering by making a very clear point that science - and math - is *not* the foundation of engineering.

Getting things to work using whatever your state of the art is, in the time and resource constraints that you are working within - THAT is what's key.

In Definition of the Engineering Method there is a great line: "Apply Science when necessary", and the trip to the Moon is shown as a classic example of where Science is ignorant but Engineers plunge ahead because, well, the President told them to and gave the funding and resources to do so. The deadline was 1970 and they did it.

THEN science came afterwards to come up with theories.

Eye opening. Completely eye opening. I avoided Engineering because of the public opinion, "Oh their weird people" - well I'm weird and think different. "Oh it's all about math and CAD and science". Well, I can't draw. I do programming and I have a love of science (physics especially - it's hard not to love physics). But I failed Calculus and had no interest in learning the symbols of higher math - as by then, I was well versed in computer programming, having gotten BASIC at 11 years old in the early 80s when all that stuff was "new".

Point being: the Engineering mindset is something you can have that is distinctive from a Scientific mindset or a Religious Mindset or a Humanities mindset.

it's different. I always called myself a "hacker" (in the old fashioned Unix good sense) Well, engineering is hacking reality to accomplish new things with the very human constraints of time, uncertainty, lack of resources, etc. There's more than one way to solve every problem and you do the best you can with what you know and what you have to work with.

Engineering seems to be the most human of all of the disciplines of knowledge. I just want to say thanks.

Kenneth Udut - simplify3 - on the 'net from before there was a

http://www...

I remember the 1993 prediction "Imminent Death of the 'Net" thread on Usenet - and they were right. It died the way it was but has gotten stronger. I've never left it. People are amazing.

P.S. I'm not looking to become an Engineer; I know I think this way already - what I always called "hacker mindset". It's just good to know where "my people" are: busy creating new stuff for the world under impossible deadlines with too few resources. I appreciate any thoughts to what I've written. Thanks!

 

[MacGyverS2000]

42 here, as well(in a few weeks, anyway), and I started with a form of BASIC and electronics when I was 8, so a lot of this sounds very familiar. Suddenly my view of the world made sense... I needed to understand, I needed to tinker, I needed to create. To this day, I wear multiple hats, including engineer, scientist, and writer. The scientist in me tries to understand the "why" behind something, the engineer creates the "how" in the real world, and the writer puts it into a perspective others can comprehend.

I see nothing wrong with identifying more strongly with one particular mindset, but always remember that each is strengthened by the other. I don't think any of them could survive in a vacuum.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[moltenmetal]

"Well, engineering is hacking reality to accomplish new things with the very human constraints of time, uncertainty, lack of resources, etc"

That's a new favourite of mine. Thanks!

My own favourite is attributed to Dr. A.R. Dykes at the British Institution of Structural Engineers in 1976:

"Engineering is the art of modelling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyze, 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."

Another is what a brilliant and shockingly practical PhD structural engineer friend of mine used to say, "An engineer can safely do for a dollar what any damned fool can do for ten." Too many of us have forgotten that or never learned it. Anybody can solve a problem by throwing money or materials or analysis at it to cover their @sses, but it takes an experienced engineer to rapidly arrive at a near-optimal solution and most importantly, be able to say with reasonable confidence, "Yes, that's good enough."

Thoughts on what you've written? A few- FWIW-

People bringing you broken things to fix, including misunderstandings and human relationships...oh man, how many times have I felt that certain people in my life, some of them utterly brilliant, would be so much better off and happier if they applied the least little bit of the same analytical thinking they use in their professional lives, to their personal/family/financial/relationship problems?! It irritated me that these smart people found it distasteful to even consider their problems of that nature being even subject to simple rational analysis! Over the years I had to learn, the hard way, that most often people don't actually WANT a solution to these sorts of problems- well not really anyway- they only want a vent pipe for their dissatisfaction which hopefully comes along with a little compassion. I try to give it to them, though I frequently fail.

Much of what you're calling the engineering mindset I'd call merely being practical, or pragmatic. That mindset certainly isn't unique to people who call themselves engineers. Regrettably I've met a great many engineers who are neither. Far too many engineers have shrunk to become dogmatic, closed minded rule followers. These people richly deserve the distain they have earned from the people who implement their design "decisions". Not working in the field, I'm not sure you know just how much ridicule is heaped on engineers by tradesmen. Some of that is natural 20/20 hindsight- anything you see now with the materials in front of you that resulted from a failure of imagination on the part of the designer at a CAD station somewhere, obviously means the designer was an idiot, right? But some of it- a significant amount in my experience- is actually richly deserved and arises from the way we educate and train engineers now. Kids go right from an academic stream in high school to an engineering school populated entirely by academics (in which engineers with industrial experience rarely have a substantial active role), right into a consulting office. Where along that route are they supposed to calibrate their commonsense? You can't be pragmatic if you don't have any grasp on what "good enough" is!

I find this hacker/maker "movement" very interesting, but I view it with a jaundiced eye- it seems pretty heavy in hype and smells of a fad to me. Most people take the term "hacker" in a perjorative way, either viewing it as referring to people trying to do something illegal or people being "hacks"- doing stuff crudely and inexpertly. But I take the use in your sentence above to be more of a reference to reverse engineering discarded things to repurpose them, and to "doing what's good enough", or defining success as function rather than process. Yep, that's me, for sure.

 

[GregLocock]

'Getting things to work using whatever your state of the art is, in the time and resource constraints that you are working within - THAT is what's key.'

A classic line.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[SNORGY]

I dunno.

I can't get past the whole Big Bang Theory "Oompa Loompa" thing.

 

[zdas04]

I'm 20 years older than the OP, and I see the ability of our profession to accept "good enough" deteriorating every year. I had a teacher in an undergraduate class in the 70's that would mark papers 100% wrong if your answer did not honor the uncertainty of the data (e.g., distance is around 5 miles, variance is 1.23232323864 ft"). That idea seems to have left Engineering Education and with it the ability to say "the most likely outcome is about ...".

The stuff the OP is talking about is all about "good enough" answers. A young engineer in one of my classes this year asked me why they had to learn calculus and differential equations in university since their job is all about spreadsheets and PowerPoint. I told her that the core stuff was the price of admission, if You couldn't learn that stuff then you couldn't objectively evaluate the world. I don't think she believed me.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[steellion]

"Scientists investigate that which already is. Engineers create that which never has been."
-Albert Einstein

 

[JNieman]

I find this hacker/maker "movement" very interesting, but I view it with a jaundiced eye- it seems pretty heavy in hype and smells of a fad to me.

110% agree.

I disdain the use/abuse of the term 'hacking' to apply it to anything someone wants to do but isn't satisfied that the title is cool enough. I'm not in marketing, I'm a Growth Hacker! I'm not personal therapist, I'm a Lifestyle Hacker! I'm not a software security consultant, I'm a white-hat hacker! Oh wait, that last one's legit.

It's similar to the over-application of the title "engineer" just so people could over-value their own station.

Also, on the "maker" thing, I could go on about my disdain for the over-application of '3d printing' as a term but it's even more off-topic than my previous rant.

OP, that's great, but why are you so concerned with identifying 'your people' as you put it?

More accurately, I think you sound like a "tinkerer" more than an engineer, really, if you want to put a name to it. The qualities you describe are not unique (or even required) for engineers, by far.

_________________________________________
NX8.0, Solidworks 2014, AutoCAD LT, Autocad Plant 3D 2013, Enovia DMUv5

 

[mtu1972]

This thread has really resonated with me. I agree with and have stated many of the ideas noted above. The following quote had been the foundation of my work throughout my career.

"There's more than one way to solve every problem and you do the best you can with what you know and what you have to work with."

It may be having been educated in the slide-rule era, but I was never looking for, or obsessed with, the 100% solution. I knew there was more than one right answer. My experience and judgment would steer me to an acceptable solution (satisfying both schedule and budget); the 95% solution, if you will. We could then move on to other parts of the project that needed to be addressed.

The fact that my projects were generally On-Time-Under-Budget separated me from many colleagues over the years. It seems that the precision afforded by today's computing methods has warped too many (design engineers and Code officials) into an absolute obsession with precision which can have negative affects on the overall project.


gjc

 

[IRstuff]

"Getting things to work using whatever your state of the art is, in the time and resource constraints that you are working within - THAT is what's key."

TRUE, but without the math and science, you get kludges, not engineering. I see this as the classical 3-legged stool. You need all three legs to have a working, usable, and user-friendly system.

I think they're "weird"

> They would rather have their kids play Pop Warner or Little League, and then wonder why their kids can't get into a good college
> They scold their children for calling us names, but secretly agree with them -- they don't seem to get that their $300 laptops that they don't, and can't, understand the workings of were designed by people like us
> They then wonder why they can't pay off their $250k college debt because all they could really do was to get a BA in psych and qualify to work as a social worker for $30k
> They, as parents, were supposed to pave the way for their children to do better than they did -- MASSIVE FAIL; this is probably the first generation since WWII where children are probably going to do worse than their parents
> They, on average, have saved only $44k by age 50, and are surprised that they can't afford to retire

TTFN
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[moltenmetal]

IRStuff, I think the math and science is covered by the "state of the art" bit of that statement. It's the math and science combined with the understanding of its application in practical ways that separates the engineered solution from the kludge slapped together from rules of thumb by a tradesman. The kludge uses $10 worth of material to solve the $1 problem much of the time too. But I've frequently seen the opposite failing too- people being paid to quote back code rules even when it's clear that they don't apply to the case at hand, or spending $10 worth of engineering to solve thE $1 problem.

 

[moon161]

Check out:
Engineering and the minds eye,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_and_the_Mind's_Eye

Anything by Henry Petroski.

Found that same PDF, looks interesting.

 

[Sparweb]

Kenneth Udut,
Some more reading, for those who aren't engineers but like to think that way: J.E. Gordon, Structures, Penguin Books, 1978
If you consider yourself more of a hacker than an engineer, that's fine by me. There is no clear distinction between trades, arts, engineering and science in my mind; each shades into the others.


STF

 

[CheckerHater]

Frank Lloyd Wright was The Greatest American Architect.

His name is also associated with several leaky roofs and structural problems. Every structure he built had problems from day one, and was a nightmare to build.

That's typical example of engineering by Art, but without Sciense.

 

[KennethUdut]

Wow, you guys are fantastic and exactly what I needed.

My use of the term Hacker isn't in the "Maker/hacker" sense - I forgot they've hijacked the term. (my continual side interest in the evolution of language over time and how it changes should've picked that up )

By hacker, I'm talking about situations where you have practically NO time to work with, people are breathing down your neck, they expect perfection but don't give you a clear idea what they want and expect you to predict it, the result has to appear flawless to their eyes (even though YOU know the places where it might fail - and you can tell them SOME potential areas to watch out for, but you can't tell them EVERYTHING or they will misinterpret that as incompetence and lose their trust in your abilities).

The solution has to last forever. It must make sense. It must anticipate anything that might happen and it must always work and never break down. It should be simple enough that a child could use it.

Automating systems seems to be where my forte has always been; mostly with data. Give me ridiculously large amounts of data from crappy sources - numbers or words - didn't matter - and I'll figure out the rules; how to automate the cleanup, combine it, process it, and spit it back out however you like. My swiss army knife is Excel + VBA but I'll use whatever tools are necessary to accomplish things precisely, without a single loss of data or missed decimal point. (I get anal about missing/lost information) Databases are always too structured for me and I always needed to do some kind of math or charts or have some interaction.

I never had to *understand* the business metrics needed; just how to express them in the way Excel likes. I've taken the same approach when working on web sites or word processing or whatever was needed from me - even fixing appliances or trying to sort out someone's personal problems. The details matter and can't be averaged out.

I suppose tinkerer would work as a description; without the training and experience that you guys have in your fields, I know I couldn't even close to using the idea of "my people" and Engineers.

I've always been an outsider to most groups; understanding 'just enough' to get a grasp of the overall mindset but never enough to join.

I tend to create groups; I come up with an idea, gather as many people as I can around it who are of similar but different mindsets (online), and do a massive brainstorming; basically they do a lot of the thinking for me and the more input I get, the better I can help them with their issues while also clarifying my own. Sort of a double-loop system, where prejudices are continually reevaluated based upon current input and modified, spit back out, brought back in, modified again, until some clarity can come forth and there's some shared understanding with prejudices mostly removed.

I apologize for my oversimplifications of Engineering; I've been told that I am "transparently emotionally enthusiastic" online (not so irl) and I have a bad habit of not recognizing when I'm playing on the wrong playground.

But I still believe that this is the closest thing to the 'right playground'. I jumped in feet first into unknown waters and you have been quite responsive to me and I greatly appreciate it.

Thanks for cutting "the new guy" some slack. I'm used to a more aggressive reception with online forums where people have been there a long time and you guys are all quite welcoming.

Ken

 

[KennethUdut]

Also, I will find Structure by JE Gordon and Engineering and the Mind's Eye by Eugene Fergusen.
It has been a difficult area to find reading materials in.

If anything, I'd say that I am more of a fan of Engineering than necessarily an Engineer. Since I was a boy, I see things happening and try to visualize how they work. Usually ends up being little and big triangles moving about in loops, picking up stuff, moving things, depositing them to be taken over by other triangles to move things to the next stage.

I see the same patterns when working with data, or looking at a building wondering where its weak spots would be, or trying to decipher what's happening inside of me when I take a vitamin and learn something about its chemistry. I'm just wired strange that's all I have more of a need to understand and visualize; I tackled a working mental model of car engines a year ago (one which I avoided for life but now have gained a great appreciation for car mechanics, especially those who can listen and hear problems; I've always had that ability with computers (I could hear when a hard drive was failing, or a screen was about to go or the innards are dusty. But that's being cursed with musical pitch; mechanics that are out of sync are like nails on a chalkboard)

It's a mostly useless trick anyway. I never could see where mentally visualizing systems could come in handy, although I use it when I have to deal with someone's issue and fix it.

Ken

 

[SNORGY]

"By hacker, I'm talking about situations where you have practically NO time to work with, people are breathing down your neck, they expect perfection but don't give you a clear idea what they want and expect you to predict it, the result has to appear flawless to their eyes (even though YOU know the places where it might fail - and you can tell them SOME potential areas to watch out for, but you can't tell them EVERYTHING or they will misinterpret that as incompetence and lose their trust in your abilities)."

The word for what you are so eloquently describing is "client".

Usually one with an MBA.

 

[IRstuff]

MBAs are not required to produce stoopid results:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

TTFN
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[Ron]

The word for what you are so eloquently describing is "client".

Usually one with an MBA.

Snorgy...glad I read that late in the afternoon and not with my morning coffee...otherwise you'd be responsible for cleaning my keyboard....no wait....only contractors and MBA's know about backcharges.

 

[Agent666]

This is one of my all time favourite engineering quotes by Herbert Hoover

"It is a great profession. There is the fascination of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings jobs and homes to men. Then it elevates the standards of living and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer's high privilege.
The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers. He cannot, like the architects, cover his failures with trees and vines. He cannot, like the politicians, screen his shortcomings by blaming his opponents and hope the people will forget. The engineer simply cannot deny he did it. If his works do not work, he is damned...
On the other hand, unlike the doctor his is not a life among the weak. Unlike the soldier, destruction is not his purpose. Unlike the lawyer, quarrels are not his daily bread. To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort, and hope. No doubt as years go by the people forget which engineer did it, even if they ever knew. Or some politician puts hs name on it. Or they credit it to some promoter who used other people's money . . . But the engineer himself looks back at the the unending stream of goodness which flows from his successes with satisfactions that few professions may know. And the verdict of his fellow professionals is all the accolade he wants."