Comment by silver_silver
7 months ago
We can’t really call the field engineering if this is the standard. A fundamental understanding of what one’s code actually makes the machine do is necessary to write quality code regardless of how high up the abstraction stack it is
Steam engines predate the understanding of not just the crystalline structure of steel but even the basics of thermodynamics by quite a few decades.
I don't consider that an equal comparison. Obviously an engineer can never be omniscient and know things nobody else knows either. They can, and should, have an understanding of what they work with based on available state of the art, though.
If the steam engine was invented after those discoveries about steel, I would certainly hope it would be factored into the design (and perhaps used to make those early steam engines less prone to exploding).
A lot of material science was developed to make cannons not explode - that them went into making steam engines possible. The early steam engines introduced their own needed study of efficiency-
Yes and they’re far less efficient and require far more maintenance than an equivalent electric or even diesel engine, where equivalent power is even possible
Steam engines currently power most of the world's electrical grid. The main reason for this is that, completely contrary to what you said, they are more efficient and more reliable than diesel engines. (Electric motors of course are not a heat engine at all and so are not comparable.)
Steam engines used to be very inefficient, in part because the underlying thermodynamic principles were not understood, but also because learning to build safe ones (largely a question of metallurgy) took a long time. Does that mean that designing them before those principles were known was "not engineering"? That seems like obvious nonsense to me.
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Why do you assume that the same doesn't apply to electric and diesel engines ?
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The problem is that software is much more forgiving than real life engineering project. You can't build a skyscraper with duct tape. With software, especially the simple webapps most devs work on, you don't NEED good engineering skills to get it running. It will suck of course, but it will not fall apart immediately. So of course most "engineers" will go the path of least resistance and never leave the higher abstractions to dive deep in concrete fundamentals.
Sure if you are doing embedded programming in C. How does one do this in web development though where there are hundreds of dependencies that get updated monthly and still add functionality and keep their job?
The current state of web development is unfortunately a perfect example of this quality crisis. The tangle of dependencies either directly causes or quickly multiplies the inefficiency and fragility we’ve all come to expect from the web. The solution is unrealistic because it involves design choices which are either not trendy enough or precluded by the platform
Maybe switch to less frequently updated dependencies and rewrite the easy ones in-house?
Yes, and I should overrule half the business decisions of the company while I am at it. Oh, and I'll push back on "we need the next feature next week" and I'll calmly respond "we need to do excellent engineering practices in this company".
And everybody will clap and will listen to me, and I will get promoted.
...Get real, dude. Your comments come across a bit tone-deaf. I am glad you are in a privileged position but you seem to have fell for the filter bubble effect and are unaware to how most programmers out there have to work if they want to pay the bills.
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