11mo ago

What I want to become Vs What I do

Engineering Memes @lemmy.world

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Do you... do you think we don't have Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, or Computer Engineers anymore?
- I think they're outnumbered by desk jockeys without a math degree.
  
  I mean these days the average EE is a software engineer who is good at math and bad at software.
  
  I believe that if an Electrical Engineer has qualification as a programmer then the two fields become the higher discipline "Computer Engineer." At least most universities arrange their classifications as such.
  
  I'm in engineering school and the ethos definitely is "engineers write bad code but it's for simple tasks involving complex math." As the world of engineering steers more and more towards coding we're definitely going to be expected to write applications instead of simple Matlab scripts and there's no way it's going to be pleasant.
- Right? I do both electrical and mechanical in my daily, besides some meh quality C code haha.
  
  I get it, haha. I know this is a programmer community, but it's funny to me to think of programming as a progression beyond traditional engineering disciplines, rather than along side them.
  
  Don't worry, someone else over here was saying programming is "the pinnacle" of engineering... Really hard not to disembowel a statement like that lol.
  I think programming is both an art and a science, like all engineering disciplines.
- Comp Sci is not engineering. Programming is not engineering. I don't mean this in an elitist way, it just flat-out doesn't fit with other engineering fields. It's firmly in the T area of STEM, not the E.
  
  Computer engineering is not comp sci lol
  Computer engineering is the hardware level of designing and building computers, it might involve firmware depending on the job and the area but it's way closer to electrical engineering than software engineering. Software engineering is also very different than computer science.
  Software engineering is called that because it is the equivalent of engineering in software. You are engineering and designing a product/system. Computer science is more of the theoretical side, more detailed study of algorithms and math, etc.
  What do you think of electrical engineers? Is that "real" enough to be called engineering?
  
  Computer Engineering is hardware engineering for Computers, with some programming. It's a child of Electrical Engineering, just like Electrical Engineering is sort of a child of Mechanical Engineering.
  
  And at what point in Computer Engineering do you require a fundamental understanding of Physics like every other Engineering field?
  
  The part where you have to fundamentally understand how hardware actually works, ie how transistors, integrated circuits, and logic gates actually work on a physical level.
  You're thinking of Software Engineering, and even then you'd still be off.
  
  The point where I was using my master’s in computer engineering to design physical chips? You know, using my fundamental understanding of electricity, magnetism, and the physics that come along with it.

73 comments