Comment by iancmceachern
1 day ago
It's so interesting to me as a Mechanical Engineer and Hardware designer/architect how on HN "Engineering" almost always means "Software engineering" here.
1 day ago
It's so interesting to me as a Mechanical Engineer and Hardware designer/architect how on HN "Engineering" almost always means "Software engineering" here.
It is funny, almost as funny as an entire cadre of people with “engineer” in their title who've never had to draw a free body diagram, learn circuit analysis, understand the basics of thermodynamics, or the mechanics of materials.
I hold a CS master degree from an Eastern European university and everything you listed was in our Bachelor degree program. It’s pretty funny because while studying material properties back then I always wondered how and when am I gonna use that. It kind of makes sense now that I think about it - some students preferred branching out to hardware.
edit: typo
That’s great, unfortunately it is quite rare for CS undergrad programs in the US to require the basic engineering and science classes the other engineering/science majors require.
3 replies →
Hear hear. The word "Technology" has also been redefined to mean computer or phone stuff. As a real (manly) engineer, this pisses me off no end! :-)
To answer the OP, this Civil engineering blog / video site is really good. I always learn something new, and his enthusiasm is infectious. Well worth giving it a look:
https://practical.engineering/
I would love more blogs on mechanical, hardware, and especially industrial engineering, but the demographics in those areas skew stereo-typically older and also likely less blog-oriented, right?
Blogs are almost 30 years old at this point, but yes, I do associate a nearly compulsive need to show off one's work in meticulously-crafted blog posts with younger people.
Would you consider Chris Boden the type of content you’re interested in? https://youtube.com/@physicsduck?si=WJS3UbDF0VWKwOgy
Depending on what you're looking for in industrial engineering, there are a lot of blogs on lean manufacturing and the Toyota Production System. INFORMS, may be paywalled, also publishes a lot of pretty interesting articles on applications of operations research to industry.
In general, though, my very limited experience working in manufacturing was that much of the blog equivalents were covered in things like white papers from hardware manufacturers or articles in trade publications. We always had a bunch of magazines delivered each month and there were usually some interesting articles to review.
Fair Observation, HN surrounded by mostly Software guys, which directly add nuances of "Engineering" and <Software> Engineering.
but to specific is much important, imo Engineering means "Solving problem at a scale", irrelevant of the industry.
Perhaps. Sometimes the scale is "one" - the amount of engineering that goes into bespoke space missions is very large, and very little of that work is re-used for anything other than direct follow up missions
I thought the same. Check out this mechanical engineering channel - https://youtu.be/8yUsDnBXo_g?si=CXzWV9D5OvHcCBm3
Well, engineer without any qualification used to refer only to combat engineers. (The term civil engineering betrays that history.)
Words change meaning over time and with the audience.
I remember feeling sheepish when I was hired to a position titled 'Software Engineer'. To me, those two words together seemed incongruent. Not quite an oxymoron but certainly a puzzlement.
Maybe, generously, in retrospect, an aspiration?
I never considered myself an actual engineer; I was (and still am) a self-taught un-credentialed computer programmer. More art than science. They made me take the title and the stock options and the business cards.
I mostly worked for and with EEs, making software tools for test automation. I was a fanboy hardware wannabee (and still am), got some on me but was never a true engineer. I learned from those who practiced their discipline; it was plain to me the reality of real engineering versus what I was doing.
I suppose in my travels I have on occasion encountered a true Software Engineer. I suppose there's reason to hope that software development will continue to mature and evolve, and eventually the other engineering disciplines will accept software as a science.
For me, it will always be a joy to make that hardware work with my twiddly bits. Not engineering, no. But very rewarding work that often resembles engineering.
Agreed, though I understand the YC bias. I'm in biotech and mostly follow HN just to see what the software people are interested in these days.
Yeah, even as a software engineering type I immediately thought the question was too broadly posed. I assume the OP must have had something narrower in mind.
people building physical things are probably too busy to blog about it lol