Post AV0Myfc03d6IHO8E0e by jkaniarz@mastodon.gamedev.place
(DIR) More posts by jkaniarz@mastodon.gamedev.place
(DIR) Post #AUz0TUUYxWRafHQ8Lg by urusan@fosstodon.org
2023-04-24T01:55:49Z
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I was thinking about it and my wife does highly technical fabric design work. Why isn't she considered an engineer?
(DIR) Post #AUz0TVIXxgQVAIo3G4 by jkaniarz@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-04-24T02:44:05Z
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@urusan it may be STEM, but if she’s not designing the mechanism of production, it’s not engineering.
(DIR) Post #AUz0TW7attG9icgopE by urusan@fosstodon.org
2023-04-24T03:14:41Z
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@jkaniarz Does that mean only DevOps are software engineers?
(DIR) Post #AUz0TWeutzulNyHQlU by jkaniarz@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-04-24T12:21:05Z
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@urusan Software engineering is engineering in the same way that organizing an assembly plant is engineering even though you’re not designing any of the individual machines. It’s concerned with processes and flows. DevOps is a tricky one. All the DevOPs I personally do is following other peoples guides to set it up and that is not software engineering. Creating the custom content pipelines that game companies use is software engineering.
(DIR) Post #AUz0TXG8fbglFPh9ma by jkaniarz@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-04-24T12:31:16Z
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@urusan Mere programming is not software engineering either. I work with a number of scientist that write code, but they’re not doing software engineering. Their mathematical models are good, but they struggle with integrating them into a cohesive system. Pure Computer Science isn’t engineering either, but reality forces most CS to do engineering anyway.All this isn’t to belittle any fields of study. It’s just a categorization of the nature of the work.
(DIR) Post #AUz0TXjustVYjlcwCG by urusan@fosstodon.org
2023-04-24T13:40:52Z
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@jkaniarz You don't have to reinvent all the wheels to be doing engineering.I'm unfamiliar with your example of creating custom content pipelines for games, but I'm pretty sure creating a game engine from scratch is in the same boat under your classification. Most developers working on such a task are unlikely to reimplement the most fundamental systems, like SDL or OpenGL, instead building their engine atop them using pre-designed pieces provided by these systems.
(DIR) Post #AUz0TYLqbrqidPNEJs by urusan@fosstodon.org
2023-04-24T13:49:44Z
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@jkaniarz I agree that scientists aren't (usually) doing engineering, they're doing science, which is a process of discovery about systems rather than a process of design of systems.Another contrast is with the work done by technicians. In Car Mechanic Simulator 2021, I take the role of a technician. I'm working on a currently existing car design, and I don't need to have an understanding of each part to take them apart and reassemble them. There's no design involved.
(DIR) Post #AUz0TZ2251aqkF6v4a by jkaniarz@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-04-24T13:57:39Z
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@urusan I agree, as an engineer I spend a lot of time doing non-engineering technical work. (And a lot of non technical work as well)You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to be doing engineering. Selecting the wheel to achieve desired vehicle performance is engineering. Picking your tires in the shop is not. Design isn’t necessarily engineering either. A civil engineer I know describes his job as, “architects design the building and I make it work”.
(DIR) Post #AUz0TZbTxDwwWBhEKO by urusan@fosstodon.org
2023-04-24T14:09:39Z
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@jkaniarz I consider architects to be a form of engineer that only has a different name due to historical reasons. The civil engineer is more focused on the infrastructure, while the architect is more focused on the building itself. They're both highly technical design jobs that are producing functional artifacts.
(DIR) Post #AUz0Ta9rtNSIEpmgvQ by jkaniarz@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-04-24T14:12:29Z
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@urusan He was an older retiree. Architecture is certainly more engineering now that they have to meet LEED standards.
(DIR) Post #AUz0TakNhcf844rqq0 by urusan@fosstodon.org
2023-04-24T14:19:12Z
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@jkaniarz I think the better contrasts to focus on are with technician and artist. Technical work doesn't require design. Artistic work doesn't have optimization (or viewed another way, the only optimization is aesthetics).These allied fields all blend together, with experienced technicians occasionally doing engineering activities and artists designing functional pieces.
(DIR) Post #AUz0TbKBYVInr7cRe4 by urusan@fosstodon.org
2023-04-24T14:26:17Z
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@jkaniarz In the crafting example that initiated the conversation, a typical knitter is a technician. They follow a designer's pattern to get the desired result, a functional piece of clothing.Craft designers are an interesting engineer-artist mix, since they have to make functional clothing, but it is mostly aesthetics-focused.My wife goes further than that. She designs the fabric that the designers and knitters use. She has knowledge of the entire chain from raw material to finished piece.
(DIR) Post #AUz0Tbw7HTdxklMjlg by urusan@fosstodon.org
2023-04-24T14:31:49Z
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@jkaniarz Here's another train of thought: I would consider designing rockets in Kerbal Space Program to be an engineering activity.Sure, all the parts are off the shelf, but you're designing a functional artifact (a rocket/spaceship). You don't have a pattern, you are designing, and there is technical functional optimization.Much like how Car Mechanic Simulator captures the heart of technical work, KSP captures the heart of engineering work.
(DIR) Post #AUz0TcZSvB7RinmA6K by urusan@fosstodon.org
2023-04-24T14:52:25Z
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@jkaniarz When viewed as an activity rather than an entire profession, it becomes quickly apparent that engineering is pretty common.Technicians do it whenever they switch from following the pattern to designing an ad-hoc fix. Artists do it whenever they are working on functional designs or are developing their underlying medium.An engineer then is just a person who does engineering as their most prominent work.
(DIR) Post #AUz0Td0PJ0fb4MNg5w by moth_ball@shitposter.club
2023-04-24T16:48:23.868795Z
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@urusan @jkaniarz to me it feels like semantics between design and engineering, though engineering has the integral component of math and friends, while something based more on experience and iteration might not
(DIR) Post #AV0Myfc03d6IHO8E0e by jkaniarz@mastodon.gamedev.place
2023-04-24T15:12:30Z
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@urusan When it comes to the design of fabric, is she designing it for measurable properties like tensile strength or durability? Is she taking an artistic design and modifying it for manufacturability?
(DIR) Post #AV0Myg6qCxlpp2Yr56 by urusan@fosstodon.org
2023-04-25T05:01:38Z
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@jkaniarz In my wife's specific case, she's been working on a new kind of composite material, so a lot of the work was on developing the right manufacturing method and the testing was on the resulting swatches for material properties like tensile strength and durability. One particularly memorable test was the burn resistance test. Wash resistance is another important measurable attribute for a fabric.So I'd say it's a pretty cut and dry case for her specifically.
(DIR) Post #AV0MygfE97HBXgeJg8 by moth_ball@shitposter.club
2023-04-25T08:35:21.568458Z
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@urusan @jkaniarz Chalk it up to employers making job titles into arbitrary neologisms to attract new recruits. They might have thought "fabric engineer" didn't sound cool enough.
(DIR) Post #AV0Myho7tVzN5ZowBk by urusan@fosstodon.org
2023-04-25T05:13:29Z
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@jkaniarz However, I'm not quite sure why adapting an artistic design for manufacturing isn't engineering.Simply having aesthetic design parameters involved doesn't automatically mean it's not engineering. Front end and game developers consistently have to deal with aesthetics. Mechanical and civil engineers also frequently deal with aesthetic concerns.It's pretty clear there's a spectrum between purely functional design and purely artistic design.
(DIR) Post #AV0MyjVPa4CuM751IO by urusan@fosstodon.org
2023-04-25T05:25:26Z
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@jkaniarz I would place the adaptation of a purely artistic design into something that can be manufactured and/or the manufacturing machinery/processes fairly far into the engineering end of that spectrum.You're optimizing your design to minimize cost/labor while retaining the artistic/aesthetic characteristics of the original.Aesthetics is not the primary concern, if it were, just make another copy of the original, it already maximizes the aesthetic value of the piece