tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733074358901582680.post1479771361196526747..comments2024-03-13T07:28:50.206-04:00Comments on Healthcare Standards: In the Olden DaysKeith W. Boonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16883038460949909300noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733074358901582680.post-86357739636526441592012-10-11T10:44:43.439-04:002012-10-11T10:44:43.439-04:00Growing problem, and not limited to software. I s... Growing problem, and not limited to software. I spent an interesting afternoon last year with MIT profs who where re-examining how they taught electronics. Most current design is based on mystery black box components of great complexity. Nobody fully understands how most of their parts work. But they need to know how to find parts, evaluate parts, select parts, use parts, and troubleshoot designs. The challenge for the teachers is to figure out what skills remain necessary and what can be dropped from the curriculum.<br /> The major growth is in the use of system design understanding. There is also an effort to make awareness of ignorance a conscious skill. A good engineer or scientist understands the nature and limits of their understanding.<br /> But there remain the question of how much basic electronics should be taught. Some relationships remain crucial. Concepts like reactance and capacitance are rarely needed in digital electronics, but you need enough awareness to recognize when they might have an affect on the system. Similarly, it's unlikely that an electronics designer will ever control the dialectric constant of their materials, but they need to be able to work with and discuss these issues with the materials selection staff.<br /> Another key skill is assessing the build-buy decisions. I recall one engineering discussion that revolved around whether we would write a 100-line bit of new code, or pull in a library component that carried a 1MB code penalty for all the other stuff it dragged in. There was real concern that future staff would not have the skills needed to maintain the code. Basic algorithm design is no longer taught in many schools, and the new staff did not recognize that this was a commonplace well established algorithm. They only saw the custom code replacing their usual building blocks.<br /> It's a long and a difficult process to find the right balance between teaching the fundamentals and ignoring unnecessary details. It's made more difficult because the system engineering skills that are increasingly needed are also much harder to learn that the old basics. Most people are taking the path of deceiving themselves. They think that they are learning engineering, programming, or whatever, when all they have actually learned is recipes and trial-error methods of plugging things together without understanding.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-733074358901582680.post-38192356704673900462012-10-09T14:13:13.119-04:002012-10-09T14:13:13.119-04:00i contend that many of these existed in the 1970s....i contend that many of these existed in the 1970s. I learned BASIC using the free compiler included from microsoft. I found lots of code, using gopher. John Moehrkehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04526719420117446030noreply@blogger.com