My prior post was critical of the abstraction-based, mathematics-heavy, and computation-focused eduction served up to today’s engineering students. It has been my experience has been that the most successful engineers in industrial practice are very hands-on, with years of practical experience, and insights that have little to do with academic equations. That’s not to say [...]
In my prior post, I proposed that each engineering position requires a different level of abstraction. To a research engineer, almost everything is model-based, while the production engineer may be primarily focused on issues that are object-based. Although freshman and sophomore engineering students receive guidance as to the sub-discipline they should enter (electrical, mechanical, chemical, [...]
(Part 1 and part 2 of this series) In my most recent post, I proposed the following definition (which I’ve slightly revised): engineer: an individual who designs novel methods, devices, or systems that can be practically implemented to meet specified constraints, or analyzes existing methods, devices, or systems for their capacity to meet such constraints, [...]
Ever hear of the “Marshmallow Challenge?” Small teams of individuals are given the following assignment: use twenty sticks of uncooked spaghetti, one yard of masking tape, and one yard of string to construct the tallest possible free-standing structure that supports the weight of a marshmallow. Most people assume that since a marshmallow doesn’t weigh much, [...]
It is my hope that, by making frequent blog entries, I will slowly sort out the tangle of thoughts that go through my head each day. These ideas and notions are often related to the engineering profession or engineering curriculum—and they all seem tangentially related to one another in some way as they pass through [...]
More than a decade ago I started a blog titled ZopeNewbies, utilizing (then hard-to-come-by) web space kindly donated by blogging pioneer Dave Winer. It was my intention at the time to assist those interested in the Zope web framework as I investigated the software myself. Although I wrote a few well-received tutorials along the way, [...]
