It’s so interesting because I started doing professional engineering AFTER doing day to day data and statistical analysis in statistical systems like matlab, R and early Python.
So my view of engineering has always been based on managing two things: functional state and data workflows
After doing software engineering professionally for a decade now I can tell you that:
1. Most “scientific” engineers back to Minsky, Shannon etc… describe the world of computing in terms of state management, data transformation and computing overhead management. All of the big figures and pioneers in software cared A LOT about data and state basically that’s all computing was at the beginning and was expected to be the pattern moving forward
2. There’s absolutely no consistency in what are the foundationally important assumptions in engineering system design that are always true such that everyone does them - and the ones that do are fads at best
3. Business timelines dictate engineering priorities and structures much more than robustness, antifragility, state management etc… in the vast majority of production software
4. Professional organizations like guilds, unions, etc… are almost universally rejected by software engineers. Nobody actually takes IEEE seriously because there’s no downside if you don’t. This ensures there’s no enforcement or self-regulation in engineering practices the same way there are in eg Civil and biomedical engineering. Even then those are barely utilized.
Overall the state of software development is totally divorced from its exceptionally high minded and philosophical roots, and is effectively led by corporations that are priorizing systems that make money for people with money.
So what is “good” has very little to do with what is incentivized
So my view of engineering has always been based on managing two things: functional state and data workflows
After doing software engineering professionally for a decade now I can tell you that:
1. Most “scientific” engineers back to Minsky, Shannon etc… describe the world of computing in terms of state management, data transformation and computing overhead management. All of the big figures and pioneers in software cared A LOT about data and state basically that’s all computing was at the beginning and was expected to be the pattern moving forward
2. There’s absolutely no consistency in what are the foundationally important assumptions in engineering system design that are always true such that everyone does them - and the ones that do are fads at best
3. Business timelines dictate engineering priorities and structures much more than robustness, antifragility, state management etc… in the vast majority of production software
4. Professional organizations like guilds, unions, etc… are almost universally rejected by software engineers. Nobody actually takes IEEE seriously because there’s no downside if you don’t. This ensures there’s no enforcement or self-regulation in engineering practices the same way there are in eg Civil and biomedical engineering. Even then those are barely utilized.
Overall the state of software development is totally divorced from its exceptionally high minded and philosophical roots, and is effectively led by corporations that are priorizing systems that make money for people with money.
So what is “good” has very little to do with what is incentivized