Engineering in general

I am amazed at what the human mind is capable of conceiving. I am even more amazed that humans are able to do what they think, or want to do. The pyramids were built 2000 BCE, some say 10,000 BCE. Millions of cubic meters of rock, hundreds of millions of tones of rock. Countless laborers. It took hundreds(?) of years to complete - if you do not want to believe Egyptologists that is... If I stand back however, I see that it was not really that complex - yes, yes, I know that it is remarkable that the base layer of each pyramid is as good as absolutely flat and that each building block fits perfectly in place.

If we look at high rise buildings like the Petronas Towers or the Sears Tower or the not-any-more-but-still-awesome World Trade Centre more closely we will know that each one is a miracle on its own. We've grown so used to seeing them go up that our jaws don't drop anymore every time we see it happen. Even the most massive ones are not nearly as heavy as an average sized pyramid. It is essentially many a liter of concrete, many a kilometer of steel and sheet upon sheet of glass. And yet, we are astounded when buildings partially collapse (because of human error). How do we test the new building? Do we fill it up gradually from the bottom to the top and hope that it does not cave in? No. We go right ahead and put thousands of people in a building and know that it will stand!

The most astounding fact is that the technology to build massive buildings is much older that massive buildings itself - we had to wait for the escalator/elevator to be perfected to make sky scrapers practical!

When we see a massive dam like the Hoover, Itaipu or the not-yet-but-soon-to-be Three Gorges, holding back what will be approaching thousands of billions of liters of water what do we think - "Oooh, nice view! Let's go swim!". We do not even think that the dam might break and wash us down the river into a great ocean. We trust its walls.

Massive bridges like the Akashi Kaikyo, Millau Viaduct, Lake Pontchartrain Causeway or even the awe inspiring Firth of Forth that was built in the mid 1800's are common place. How does an engineer test a newly constructed bridge? Will she take her four year old, put him on his bicycle and hope that he reaches the other side? Will she then get in her small car and drive across the bridge and hope to reach the other side? Will she then get a fair sized truck to make the trip and look on in anguish as she prays to all the benevolent forces in the universe to protect the bridge? Will she then gamble with a mini rush hour volume of traffic? No! Cut the ribbon, drive!

We did not even touch on other amazing structures, inventions and consumables that just works. Like petrochemical plants, airliners, tunnels, massive ocean liners, space stations, ocean-bound exploration platforms, domes, busses, rockets, power plants of all sorts, the space shuttle and on and on and on...

What makes all of this possible? Mathematics. Physics. Chemistry - and the understanding and applications thereof. In all the mature engineering disciplines there is a solid foundation of mathematics together with interesting applications of mathematics - thermodynamics, strength of materials, static and dynamic forces and so on.

You also have a clear stratification in skill and ability in the mature engineering disciplines. At the foundation level you'll find pure mathematitians. They figure out stuff - stuff that not even they know the application of. On top of this foundation of pure mathematics you'll find people that can see the application of the clever stuff bubbling from beneath them, we'll call them the engineering scientists. Building on top of the engineering sciences you'll find types that can use all the tools handed up from the lower layer to build predictive models. These are your engineers. At the next level you'll find individuals that can take the models and draw designs, diagrams, schemas and plans and hand it off to other individuals that can correctly interpret the designs and such. At the next level you'll get the types that can say "Ok Bob, do this, that and the other!" - according to the plans etc. And right at the top sits Bob, someone that is relatively unskilled but hard working.

What do we have that even approach this in the software engineering field? Should we be arrogant enough to call software endeavors "engineering"? What are your thoughts? More on this in a later article.