The Things We Make by Bill Hammack
Changed my way of understanding what engineering is. Read the chaoter on designing cathedrals without math, science or modelling.
Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
61–70 of 140 posts
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#62I'm not sure if these books really are what you're looking for, because each of them is a mix of engineering history, and the description of how a group of people end up doing amazing things.
In each of the books, there were nuggets of wisdom that I've tried to bring along with me in my job (as best I can).
Like:
- Doing things as simply as possible to start off
- Keeping iteration time to a minimum, for maximum exploration of ideas
- Being willing to think outside the box
My takeaways above, hardly do these books justice, but they are as follows:
- Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed [0]
- Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. [1]
- The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal [2]
[0]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/101438.Skunk_Works
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56829.Hackers
[2]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/722412.The_Dream_Machine
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Discussed most recently/productively here at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37686713 I think.
This very thread inspired me to read not only this book, but also this particular translation.
Read through the thread and didn't see references to the translation by Derek Lin, could you point to why you selected that version?
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#64The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter
Engineers (and scientists) often boast ourselves as master of causality. We solve problem by understanding the domain. We laugh people as cargo-culting - not knowing why one does things. The Secret of Our Success shows it is a feature rather than a bug. The effect of "culture" takes much longer to manifest, often beyond our comprehension. One example given by the book is how we process cassava, lots of superfluous ritual. Without those processing culture, people get poisoned slowly. Only with modern chemistry do we comprehend the full extend of those ritual. But people have been eating cassava way before modern science were available. Similar can be said about medicine, lots of folk remedies don't work. But when they do, they do. Is not understanding a feature or a bug?
With the advent of LLM, things seem to come in full cycle. We now prompt the engine and get a result/an opinion of sort. No longer is understanding required. I see the use of LLM in software engineering very anti-engineering, hindrance to learning and understanding. But it might not be a bug after all.
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#65I recommend Marvin Minisckys society of minds book. He was one of founding fathers of AI tech, the book tells lot about human mind an Interesting read.
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you read the whole book yourself or just skim it? (asking sincerely)
I read the book completely. The book was on a second year reading list for my industrial design department. I absorbed as an introduction to the philosophical aspects of quality. Quality is truly a tough concept if approached as a universal truth.
That makes sense to me. I'm not sure how to articulate what I got out of that book exactly but I did enjoy it. Some of the more 'spiritual' books I find, the value of them doesn't really hit you until you're older or have had some tragic life experiences happen. Until then some of it can just make you feel "this is some vapid feel-good hippie crap." Not saying that was your reaction of course but it makes sense to me why you might not vibe with it if you read it in a university setting.
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#67I can recommend a Philosophy of Software Design Paperback by John Ousterhout. I've been programming for 15 years and it closely parallels my own current beliefs about programming. He stands above the lower aspects of programming/code/modules, raising the discussion to a conceptual level, that you seem to be wanting. I think there were only 2 areas out of approximately 10 that I thought I had a few better ideas but a)He may have simplifying it to more easily allow explanation. b) His explanations are much better than mine and if I tried to explain it, maybe I'd fail.
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are several ways to approach the Tao Te Ching, including the mystical, but I think that there's a great book that explains the underlying approach the Chinese have, called, Treatise on Efficacy. Essentially, in Chinese philosophy, any given situation has a propensity (water tends to run downhill). It is therefore more effective to work with that propensity, than it is to work heroically against that propensity.…
> Essentially, in Chinese philosophy, any given situation has a propensity (water tends to run downhill). It is therefore more effective to work with that propensity, than it is to work heroically against that propensity. Interesting, this is similar to the Hindu/Indic idea of dharma (e.g. the dharma of water is to flow) and the idea of working with/towards dharma (both of oneself and the world generally). (Dharma re…
What's also interesting to me is that there are enough similarities between Vedic and ancient Greek thought, and yet here we are with Aristolean ideas in the West, and in India, things went the way of the Puranas. (Treatise of Efficacy went into the flaw baked into Aristolean thoughts separating Theory and Practice, and how going with the propensity bypasses that).
The Chinese word for this propensity of the situation is shi (勢), rather than dao (道). There are other texts that talk about exploiting and profiting from propensity (shi), rather than what the Dao De Jing talks about with wei wuwei (為無為).
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#69It may be a bit more zoomed out than what you're looking for if you're specifically looking at philosophical treatments of the practice of engineering, but Andrew Feenberg's "Questioning Technology" is excellent introduction to the philosophy of technology, particularly exploring the interplay between technological constraint and political/economic/social drivers of its development.
"Philosophy of Technology" in general is a pretty rich field with a long history, and you might find more references in it than in engineering specifically.
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
This very thread inspired me to read not only this book, but also this particular translation.
Read through the thread and didn't see references to the translation by Derek Lin, could you point to why you selected that version?
It is in the linked post, not - comments.