I was just filling out an introspective questionnaire in preparation for some team building thing at work and I got to thinking, am I really an engineer? Does being a software engineer endow me with the skills to do any engineering task, given enough time and research material?
To try to answer these questions, I am going to start a pet project to test my engineering potential. I am going to build a bridge from one end of my balcony to the other. It's about 4ft across and I don't even know enough about this subject to say what the tolerance for load should be. I still think it's an interesting challenge because it's so different from anything I've ever had to do (except maybe with popsicle sticks in middle school).
Perhaps this is the beginning of a series of challenges, to be followed in the future by "Is a software engineer a doctor?" and "Is a software engineer a mechanic?" and so on... Can the methods and approaches of analysis and deconstruction lead to (at least moderate) success in any field?
Would anyone from other fields care to try the same experiment? Wouldn't it be nice if we could all do anything?
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According to Ray Kurzweil (in his recent book: "The Singularity Is Near"), the fields of genetics, biosciences and medicine are turning into an information technology field. In particular, he shows examples how in the near future, all medical challenges in fighting diseases and disorders will be solved by a set of information technology solutions derived from the information represented largely by DNA (human genome) and implementable by technologies involving mainly GNR (Genetics/Gene Therapy, Nanotechnology and Robotics). Indeed, it is very likely that your future doctor will actually end up being nothing more than a glorified Software Engineer who will apply methods and synthesis of human genetic programming instructions coded in DNA to create or apply software-based methods and GNR technologies to fix whatever bug you have in your system…
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