Engineering is art. Be it having a gut feeling, reverse engineering a problem or finding creative solutions to problems.

There might be a deeper meaning that the Japanese word 技術 ([:Gijutsu:]) translats to technology, but can equally mean technique or art. But what does it mean, to be an engineer?

Lexicographical Definition

There are multiple similar descriptions for “engineer”, additionally it is depending on the field on where the term is applied. In the more general sense an engineer is trying to benefit from the forces of nature. 1 Many more concrete explanations exist for the various types out there. Aerospace engineer, civil engineer, chemical engineer, or systems engineer, just to name a few. I am not to explain them though.

Personal Take

My field is computer science, where the magic happens in a digital form. Allowing bits and bytes to be put into place, depending on a lot of complex components to work just the way they are supposed to. Except for when they are not… And the verbal form, where transporting one’s thoughts or mental model of a topic at hand into a form that is understood by the opposing party.

The Art

Writing programs of sorts is something that one can learn by going through examples, copying over snippits from the world wide web and asking a copilot to suggest how the code might continue. The world is changing and we are into a new paradigm where - more than ever - one’s own knowledge of the actual internal workings will be less important. Until something breaks.

The real art is, not to be able to write or adapt code, but to debug and dig into the internals. It is nothing a university course is really able to teach, it needs a certain mindset that one simply needs to wrap their head around. Reading parts of code, not needing to fully understand it, but get a grasp of roughly what it is that is supposed to happen. Knowing this, allows going down the rabbit hole step by step (or adding print lines or console output on the way..).

Written / Spoken

To bring a concept/idea/mental model closer to someone in the form of writing, can be another tricky challange. One can use a lot of cross references, and quick summaries to link or hint the reader into deeper insights of sections that might go overboard for the actual writeup. Such references can be relevant to anyone trying to figure out how certain conclusions or decisions have been made, leaving them out can totally work. An art definitely hard to master, as the feedback loop is very long or not existent. And going down any further into the written form reveals a whole new set of skills that have already created dedicated roles within our society.

Talking about engineering, even when not directly teaching something, but working out an issue together, has yet another aspect to it. Similar to writing, we need to adopt our work based on multiple factors. Splitting apart not only knowledge on the topic, time at hand or language skills (be it programming or speech). Another skill is to be able to elegantly bring all those different aspects together while speaking to one another, and coming to a path of shared understanding. Every conversation is a new picture that is to be drawn, a new thread to be sown, a seed planted to sprout, and new expirience gathered to improve ones own.

The Start

Everyone has some sort of understanding how things work. If I turn a wheel, the adjacent one receives force. Friction is adding some loss, but in the end both are turning. If I make changes to the input or state of a program, inner workings start going into different directions. The more one keeps turning and looking into what is going on, the better the udnerstanding becomes. Until one develops a feeling, like feeling a rythm where music sounds “just right”, the gut feeling is born. Developing this special power allows seeing things from a different angle than before. Spotting the one note that sounds off, the function call that does not seem to be doing what it is supposed to. ¹

The Evolution

The more one goes into details, the less of an overview becomes reasonably possible. Programs nowadays are simply to big, too interconnected, simply put: complex. What previously was pen & paper, today became logs, traces and visualizations. Programs supporting finding hints of errors, statistics going through irregularities and black boxes that hint to what previously required deeper digging to even be able to see. This means more trees in the forest, but also more roots connecting them together. Water will always flow downriver. Except for when it is under the earth, there it might be pushing between layers of clay, und suddenly be pressed onto the surface from below. We’ll see what the future holds.

The History

One who looks into the future, must not forget the past. Where bugs have previously been literal creatures moving into the machine and clogging up a wheel. Cards be stamped to program early computers before allowing them to communicate over longer distances. Further down the road we had interferences, new protocols and technologies developed working around the “features” of our chosen transport medium that nature provides us. Before wireless technologies came printers, where until today a lot of issues keep happening, some still being unsolved misteries and worries, too many to count. We’ll always require on-site support engineers walking around to re-plug cables. Or capable children or parents to assist us.

Footnotes

There might never be the point where a gut feeling arises, but the more understanding is gathered, sharing knowledge might trigger others to see things that would otherwise be hidden to them. Sometimes it feels “too obvious”, but do not falter to speak up and ask even the most obvious. It might be the missing piece.] ↩