Interview: Glenn Vanderburg on engineering
Download MP3In episode 12, I used the chapter in /Image and Logic/ about Monte Carlo methods to argue that analogies of software development to engineering are not helpful. Glenn Vanderburg pushed back: it's not *engineering* that's the problem; it's our misunderstanding of engineering. I invited him on the podcast to make his point.
Mentioned
- One of Glenn's talks on engineering.
- The first part of Hillel Wayne's interviews of people who've "crossed over" to software from "real" engineering. It's really good.
- Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, 1969
- Fredrick Brooks, Jr., The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist, 2010
- David L. Parnas and Paul C. Clements, "A Rational Design Process: How and Why to Fake It", 1986.
- The Neal Ford talk about constraints was taken down from YouTube because Protecting Intellectual Property by removing a whole talk that uses a short clip is far more important than Mr. Ford's ideas.
Glenn's other recommendations:
- What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History, by Walter Vincenti
- Engineering and the Mind’s Eye, by Eugene S. Ferguson
- Definition of the Engineering Method, by Billy Vaughn Koen
- A number of Henry Petroski’s books shed valuable light on the actual practice of engineering:
- To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
- Invention by Design: How Engineers Get from Thought to Thing
- Design Paradigms: Case Histories of Error and Judgment in Engineering
- Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design
- To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure
- Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America (this is quite different from the others, but by telling the real, non-idealized tale of how so many great bridges were built — including several disastrous failures and many other near failures — this book was instrumental in helping me understand how inaccurate the common stereotype of engineering really is)
Credits
Image of double effect distillation chemical plant via Wikimedia Commons. User:Luigi Chiesa, CC BY 3.0. Cropped by Brian Marick.
Image of double effect distillation chemical plant via Wikimedia Commons. User:Luigi Chiesa, CC BY 3.0. Cropped by Brian Marick.
