20 Jun
2004
20 Jun
'04
6:05 a.m.
On Sun, 20 Jun 2004, Teo Zenios wrote:
Tools are great, I use them myself. But you have to
have some knowledge of
what's going on to know when the answer the tool gives you is wrong (maybe
you didn't feed the tool enough information, forgot something, or there is a
bug in the program, etc). Lots of solutions that look good on a computer end
up not working great in the field because of many things that are not
modeled in your tool. Bridges fall, roofs cave in, microchips short out, etc
not because the tools were wrong, but because when things get too big or too
small other forces that normally don't matter come into play. The only thing
that really changes in engineering is we have new materials, controls, and
better detailed models to play with, the basics you learned in school don't
change much if at all. Without the basics the tools are just a good quick
way to make a mess of things. Somebody who knows what's going on can jump
from tool to tool, if you just know how to use one particular tool then your
in trouble.
I think the question boils down: Are we losing any knowledge as each
generation passes?
My instinct would say "no", since the world is still working. People
still understand electronics, mechanics, physics, etc. People are still
being taught the fundamentals. One learns more in classrooms today than
they did 100 years ago. Much of the subject matter has changed, but the
basics remain the same.
For example, we no longer learn how tubes/valves work, because we don't
design with them anymore. However, the functional basics are the same as
with transistors. We don't learn in detail how tubes or transistors work
because we aren't going to be designing and building new ones. Now we
learn how FPGAs and the like work because that's what we design with. In
100 years, FPGAs will be quaint, just like vacuum tubes are today. But as
long as the basics are still being taught, the world will keep working.
The most important things I learned in college is how
to deal with people
you might not like but have to work with, the basics of the field I was in
Exactly. But you don't need to go to school to learn this. A job as a
waiter in a restaurant will teach these skills quite nicely.
(that you DO use believe it or not for the rest of
your life), and how to
solve problems you never seen before in a logical way.
That's what most people don't realize school is all about. It's not about
learning a subject matter, it's learning how to THINK properly (a skill
many people lack today, partially as evidenced by the mess the world is
currently in).
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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