Making Fun of Engineers

[jstaylor62]

Engineer vs. Manager

A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"
The man below says: "Yes, you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field."
You must be an engineer" says the balloonist.
"I am" replies the man. "How did you know."
"Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but it's no use to anyone."
The man below says "you must be in management."
"I am" replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?"
"Well," says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going, but you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault."

 

[Burk Cornelius]

my perceptions of engineers is that they are more intelligent than me!!

My perception of Engineers is that they THINK they are more intelligent than me

 

[BobAsh]

lol at a calculator making an engineer obsolete.

 

[WhiteyMacD]

This is very true. All of TU's computer science classes are taught in Java, which is basically a language designed for bad programmers IMO. The guy who teaches AI taught the course in Common Lisp when I took it but I heard they finally made him quit doing that (which is a shame).

When I went in,.. it was C++ and Java.

What are these? emacs doesn't have them.

Usually found in those Development Environments that some programers think are more than Rapid Application Development Environments...*cough Visual Studio cough*

Guilty, but only insofar as I have flat-out refused to use Java because it involved doing a bunch of pointless work.

I refuse to use Java because any program I have ever used that was complete java based was more buggy than corpses underpants. So much for auto garbage cleanup, eh?

But what I meant about Diva programmers, the ones that develop an application, and when approached from the end users' perspective, they act like the end user is a complete idiot (sometimes they are), but still. I cant stand that approach that "this is how I wrote it, this is how its supposed to be used." Some things you shouldnt sacrifice on, but lets face it,... programming is more-so about the end user and how they will use it, not how some geek behind a terminal thinks it should be used.

 

[poopgiggle]

lol at a calculator making an engineer obsolete.

Near the end of the summer I was given my first real design job: a machine that would make a continuous curve out of a set of points--one point coming in every fifteen seconds--from a new invention developed in England for tracking airplanes, called "radar." It was the first time I had ever done any mechanical designing, so I was a little bit frightened.

I went over to one of the other guys and said, "You're a mechanical engineer; I don't know how to do any mechanical engineering, and I just got this job

"There's nothin' to it," he said. "Look, I'll show you. There's two rules you need to know to design these machines. First, the friction in every bearing is so-and-so much, and in every gear junction, so-and-so much. From that, you can figure out how much force you need to drive the thing. Second, when you have a gear ratio, say 2 to 1, and you are wondering whether you should make it 10 to 5 or 24 to 12 or 48 to 24, here's how to decide: You look in the Boston Gear Catalogue, and select those gears that are in the middle of the list. The ones at the high end have so many teeth they're hard to make. If they could make gears with even finer teeth, they'd have made the list go even higher. The gears at the low end of the list have so few teeth they break easy. So the best design uses gears from the middle of the list."

I had a lot of fun designing that machine. By simply selecting the gears from the middle of the list and adding up the little torques with the two numbers he gave me, I could be a mechanical engineer!

OK, a calculator and a Perl script that picks gears from the middle of a list.

 

[dugby]

Q. Where did Thomas Edison get his engineering degree?

A. He did not have one. Educated at Home and in books he bought for himself.

An inquisitive, persistent and pragmatic mind is worth 10 times as much as proof that you can follow orders by completing an engineering program.

People make fun of engineers because they understand how often they are of no help. Pragmatism in the really good engineers is worth a lot.

 

[NikatKimber]

OK, a calculator and a Perl script that picks gears from the middle of a list.

That reminds me of the joke above... $49,999 for knowing where the "X" goes.

Which list do you pick gears off of?

What material?

What standards must they be made to?

For the gears / speeds spec'd, what bearing/bushing rating is needed?

How much axial/radial force is generated?

Can it be made more durable? lighter? faster? quieter? more efficient? and most importantly... cheaper?

You write a program that runs on a computer that is cheaper, faster, and easier to use than an engineer, I'm sure someone will buy it.

 

[nich018]

An Engineer deciding between a Wife and Mistress:

An architect, an artist and an engineer were discussing whether it was better to spend time with the wife or a mistress.
The architect said he enjoyed time with his wife, building a solid foundation for an enduring relationship.
The artist said he enjoyed time with his mistress, because of the passion and mystery he found there.
The engineer said, “I like both.”
“Both?”
Engineer: “Yeah. If you have a wife and a mistress, they will each assume you are spending time with the other woman, and you can go to the lab and get some work done.”

 

[NikatKimber]

Q. Where did Thomas Edison get his engineering degree?

A. He did not have one. Educated at Home and in books he bought for himself.

An inquisitive, persistent and pragmatic mind is worth 10 times as much as proof that you can follow orders by completing an engineering program.

...Pragmatism in the really good engineers is worth a lot.

This I won't argue with.

People make fun of engineers because they understand how often they are of no help.

There seems to be a certain relationship between book smarts, and people skills. Some engineers are literally "too smart for their own good"

Many just get really tired of dealing with idiots.

Some just haven't reached that point yet.

 

[RidgeHunter]

There seems to be a certain relationship between book smarts, and people skills.

There totally is. If I'm ever sick, I want my doctor to be a jerk. The best doctors have horrible people skills.