Comment by corethree

>Those formulas are not reversible. You can compute load bearing capacity of a design, and you can compute cost of a design, but you cannot start with load bearing capacity and cost, run those through a formula, and get a bridge. Or even a sketch of a bridge.

What goes on today is largely just a bunch of templates. See the requirements and pick a template and modify it accordingly. That template can definitely be plugged into a optimization equation.

ML models can be used to find the best templates if you want. It's a way to use compute to "design" things and sort of estimates the most optimal design given a set of other templates. These things can be modelled but sometimes they are not computationally tractable to find the best of the best optimal system.

>Design comes first, always, whether it is for real-world items or for software. The design is then validated using formal methods, and iterated until it meets the required goal.

The difference between software and real world engineering is that in software the primitives are well defined and few. You aren't dealing with thousands of variables so you don't need something like optimization theory or ML to estimate the optimum.

There can very much be a theory for software that is practical because software is basically trying to simulate mathematics. It's not so complicated that it can't be done.

>If you still want to maintain your position that you can compute a bridge, feel free to point out a source that describes the formula for bridges. Or any object that takes significant engineering, really.

I maintain that one exists. We just don't know it and may never know it because the theory would involve billions of primitives. I maintain that one exists for software design and while we don't know it right now I think it's possible to find one.

What I don't like about this question is the subtle sass of "maintaining your position to compute a bridge". It's a bit rude. Feel free to not be rude. thank you.