Neoengineers(elijahpotter.dev) |
Neoengineers(elijahpotter.dev) |
Engineering is about the weight of responsibility you have from the thing that you build. Being knowledgeable and accomplished is a way to reduce that weight because you are confident that you did the correct thing.
This bridge is rated for 10 tons. This chemical process produces 1 mg 99% purity crystals. This biological process produces 90% pure insulin. This circuit handles 1 kA.
Engineering is not about better or worse it is about acceptable or unacceptable.
This naturally results in a desire for requirements so you can meet your guarantees. Specifications so you know what guarantees you need or what you are provided and how those map back to the real responsibility. Standards so you can consistently solve common problems.
I think theres still a lot of room for traditional engineering - methods that have been robust enough to stand the test of time are enduring because they work! Hype will always hype, but when its delivery time and the system is stress tested, we will see what happens...
Yes having more knowledge and accomplishment (experience) in anything in life lets you develop more confidence.
Ethicality is different from responsibility though, I think you conflated the two.
I am confused how you got to “make the minimal thing that ticks of [sic] all of the must requirements”. I said engineering was about objective guarantees. Requirements are a derivative and means of that.
Making things better, more efficient, cheaper, etc. is not at odds with that. If you guarantee that level of performance and achieve it, then you have produced a acceptable instance meeting your guarantees. If you fail to meet your guarantees, then you have something unacceptable.
Despite the tolerances of a rocket-quality screw being far better than a car-quality screw being far better than a toy-quality screw, a car-quality screw does not get a pass in rockets because it is “better” than a toy-quality screw. It needs to meet the guarantees.
When you would rather have nothing over something that pretends to meet its guarantees, then you are probably in the vicinity of engineering.
Here's one simple one we can probably agree on:
> An engineer is a professional who applies scientific and mathematical principles to design, build, and maintain machines, structures, systems, and software.
As a professional applying these principles to design, build and maintain systems, morals and ethics are not involved in the definition of a professional who does these things. If you want to involve that, use your adjectives and communication and writing skills to add the word ethical or responsible in front of the word engineer wherever you use it. Instead of making up new definitions to fit your egoic desires: i.e. say "Responsible engineers xysz" instead of "engineers xysz" and then trying to project onto everyone that they are wrong or don't understand what an engineer is if they don't automatically assume and engineer must be responsible to be called an engineer. (which imo is deceptive and self-serving in use of language)