Structural engineers are unsung heroes(theguardian.com) |
Structural engineers are unsung heroes(theguardian.com) |
So much of what we use we take for granted, but it really is worth seeing what goes into making potable water come out of your tap. In middle school, I toured the Baldwin water plant in Cleveland, OH. There is a huge hall full of sand filters that filter out the schmutz after the water is chemically treated. It's one thing to know abstractly that drinking water is filtered through sand to make it drinkable. It's another to see the process in action on a grand scale.
In Boston, I highly recommend seeing the Chestnut Hill pumping station, which pumped water from the Chestnut Hill reservoir. It long predates the availability of sufficiently powerful electric motors, and the three steam engines are a testament to how much work went into pumping water around prior to the development of electric pumps.
I believe the last of the steam engines was decommissioned in the early '70s. I'm told the pumping capacity has been replaced by electric pumps in a single 3m square building, which somehow doesn't convey the same sense of awe and indebtedness to the engineers who make running water possible.
Gotta share a longtime favorite joke:
What's the difference between civil (structural) engineers and mechanical engineers?
Mechanical engineers build weapons. Civil engineers build targets.
As a Data/SWE guy, I still enjoyed reading it a lot.
https://www.amazon.com/Design-Paradigms-Histories-Judgment-E...
It's about investigating airplane crashes, and in particular two different paradigms for understanding failure. It deeply changed how I think and talk about software bugs, and especially how I do retrospectives. I strongly recommend it.
And the article made me think of Stewart Brand's "How Buildings Learn": https://www.amazon.com/dp/0140139966
It changed my view of a building from a static thing to a dynamic system, changing over time.
The BBC later turned it into a 6-part series, which I haven't seen, but which the author put up on YouTube, starting here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0
I especially like that in the comments he writes: "Anybody is welcome to use anything from this series in any way they like. Please don’t bug me with requests for permission. Hack away. Do credit the BBC, who put considerable time and talent into the project."
Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down by J.E. Gordon https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/245344.Structures
Science and the City https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28260428-science-and-the...
Why Buildings Stand Up: The Strength of Architecture
Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail
Why Buildings Fall Down includes a case study on a seemingly minor change during construction that caused a walkway to collapse once it was put in use.
At the risk of stating the obvious, these are focused on buildings rather than roads :-)
My boss would coldly say 'Do you mind removing brake pedals from your car to make it prettier'?
Everyone is disagreeable & eccentric to some extent when they were young, including the world's great engineers/theorists.
There's more to this equation, add parameter of hard work, a bit of obsession (or 'passion', whatever that is...), a bit of environmental 'push', and THEN perhaps that might yield a 'great' individual who does that one thing very well.
A much more interesting piece of information would be how many people have those characteristics, but do _not_ turn out to be great engineers.
Pun intended?
Not sure how to read that or how you meant it, but a good or bad engineer can have a big financial effect on a project in a way that a tradesman couldn't.
Can you name these? Because that statement is false if interpreted literally.
Funny. I inferred the tone as having levity. One, or both, of us is projecting.
I think it is a nice remark :-). Sometimes the design has to make a little concession, sometimes the construction. The best engineers are those that think along and try to find solutions, the best architects have some understanding of what is possible. And often 'everything is possible, it is just going to cost a lot'.
It's much less funny when one knows that one such "star architect" back from that time (George Matei Cantacuzino for those interested, here's his wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Matei_Cantacuzino) was in charge of designing the Carlton building in downtown Bucharest. Only 4 years had passed since the building had been finalized when it collapsed as a result of the November 1940 earthquake. Cantacuzino himself had an apartment in that building but fortunately for him he was out the evening when the earthquake happened so he escaped. He risked prison-time after the whole ordeal, but then we got into war with the Soviets (not such a bright idea) and nothing came out of it. Here's the wiki page for that Carlton building: https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocul_Carlton (it's in Romanian, but it has photos with the building itself and the earthquake's aftermath).
Point is I'm sure that the architects can very well handle a small joke as long as they're aware that people's lives depend on their work.
Can't say I am thrilled by the book under review. I've seen it in bookshops and it's far from offering a critical account of engineering. More like someone quite innocent and enthusiastic who has drunk the kool-aid of the macho, Cartesian, ethically oblivious engineering tradition. Rowan Moore's faint praise is appropriate.
I think one of the key differentiators for engineering is that something engineered should work by design after it has been built (not including regular maintenance of a machine). A defect requires a special process to repair all built instances.
In software development, defects are a regular occurrence requiring continuing changes, and requirements change as well. Of course, that's very different from a bridge or a combustion engine for example.
Automated testing can help push software development _toward_ an engineering mindset.
BTW - you're right that most software devs don't need licensing or formal education, but it comes off as pejorative. While those could help set standards, some of the most talented people I've worked with have neither (and some of my class mates in college don't affirm a benefit for formal training).
Structural engineering is much like calling library functions with certain parameters and then making sure it all works and is safe. You know how what you are constructing differs from existing buildings and use that to decide what to do. You don't (usually) invent new ways of building things or building things that are unlike anything that was built before.Therefore such projects are well-known engineering practice, and your skill and knowledge of those practices can be tested and you can be licensed.
Some software development is like that too but most is not, you are creating new designs all the time because your software is for new purposes, not to replace something existing with perhaps a slightly improved version. It's hard to license anybody in "inventing new things".
This actually happened to me back when I worked for Telecom Gold
For the former yeah I can kinda see where your coming from, but for the latter there is huge scope to affect how the project turns out financially in a way that a carpenter or supervising engineer just doesn't have.
You seem to be forgetting that vast majority of software development is churning out the same old buggy barely maintainable CRUD apps in dull enterprise environments or for tight fisted agency clients.
(Besides, the question about whether software development is engineering or craft is very much real. John Allen, John McCarthy, Bertrand Meyer and Peter Denning have all written interesting things about this subject.)