Kids can't use computers... and this is why it should worry you

[pier4r]

(04-21-2023 09:41 PM)johnb Wrote:  I had to pull out my math books and look things up and think really hard to fully understand how he'd solved it.

To solve it myself, I would have just banged out an iterative solution in one of my trusty HP's... or slung together some C code or javascript or whatever platform I had handy. Worst case, an iterative solution in Excel. The point being, I would brute-force it by numerical methods because I'm so used to "having the machine do it," whereas he finessed it, and I bet he didn't have to crack open a single math book to do it.

About this - good point - the author of "The Secret Horsepower Race" (I can suggest the book, though it took some savings for me to buy it) wrote:

I recently spoke to a Professor of Engineering at one of the best technical universities in Germany - who told me that he could not offer an updated opinion on a technical report I had from 1943, because "we are not smarter today than those engineers".

The question is, that if this is the case - it means we in our current methodology of study and work are we merely handing over more and more of our time towards handling software, and less and less into understanding our topic.

Therefore since our intellectual capacity is now more and more tilted towards software usage, with the same capacity - the frightening implication is that we can end up becoming mere glorified software users instead of applied scientists.This is not an isolated conversation, and in England this year I had a similar discussion after I gave a technical presentation on 1940s science. I believe we are headed towards a two-tier system.

A small number of engineers able to understand fundamentals, and the bulk relegated to "advanced software users".

I`m not sure this is wise or healthy, with universities eager to promote "industry relevant" courses teaching usage of current CFD/FEA/CAD etc, how can we ensure our brains and not software remain at the core when academic teaching hours are reduced year-on-year?

(source: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn...166077440/ )

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My comment on this was: "This is a good summary and I think it applies everywhere. The more the specialization, the more one is "user of tools developed by others" while a smaller group develops those tools (note that the developers of that circle can still be larger than the group in the past). Of course this also means that missing some fundamentals can lead to less optimal solutions." (see brute force, consuming computing power rather than brain cycles)