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  • Author Author: nlarson
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Why element14 Community Members Love Being an Engineer

nlarson

Hi All,

 

In February we asked our members why they love to be an engineer over in our Celebrating Engineers group.  We were blown away by the number of responses you shared with us!  We even received a few poems and photos!  To give you a taste of what your fellow members told us they love about being engineers - check out this word cloud below.  Want to read more replies? Read the blogs.

 

Didn't have a chance to participate in the original blog?  Use the comments on this blog to tell us why you love being an engineer!  Login to comment and "like".

 

Happy Engineering!

Nicole

 

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  • Today's answer is because "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic" [Arthur C. Clarke].  As an engineer, the work I do is magic to most people -- but it's Real Magic, not mere illusion.  When reading about King Arthur or watching Excalibur, I don't want to be King Arthur -- too much exercise and politics.  No, I want to be Merlin, obsessed with knowledge of how to make magic-looking things happen and joyfully playing with that knowledge.  The Mary Stewart novels adopt this view of Merlin -- an accomplished engineer whose works appear indistinguishable from magic.

     

    I once had the opportunity to teach computer architecture.  Now that's a fun course in magic.  Students came in with knowledge of logic design (so they knew what pieces are available) and machine language programming (so they knew what computers are supposed to do).  Someone had told them that somehow you can fit those little gates together to make something that interprets machine language instructions, but there were so many blanks and so much hand-waving that it might as well have pure prestidigitation.  My class filled in the blanks -- one magic trick at a time -- so that by the end all the students could do this magic.  What could be more fun?