

The Difference Between Electrical Engineers and Computer Scientists - smanek
http://philip.greenspun.com/humor/eecs-difference-explained

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smcdow
Ugh. As someone with an EE degree, this is a nice allegory explaining why
anyone with a CS degree coming in an job interview at my company has to
demonstrate that they've overcome their deficiencies introduced by the CS
program.

Usually a few questions involving pointers does the trick quite nicely.

In fact, I'm almost at the point where I'm rejecting applicants with CS
degrees out of hand. I've had too many problems with architecture astronauts
and the Java-solves-all-problems crowd.

~~~
pmorici
I think that is an unfair characterization. People from reputable CS programs
don't think this way. The problem is watered down schools giving CS a bad
name.

~~~
jordyhoyt
Right, any program that leaves its students thinking _any_ one language solves
all problems has failed to do its job.

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ojbyrne
Of course, he asked the wrong question - if he asked the engineer to design
the whole toaster, and without constraints, it would be made of carbon-fiber,
generate heat equivalent to an arc-welder, and fold up into a wallet-sized
package. And cost $9000.

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rw
My interpretation:

Either make a great oven, or make a specialty cake-baking device. Don't
straddle the middle ground of generality, the place filled with myriad edge
cases and awkward attempts at abstraction.

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wwalker3
The supposed EE's design is too complex by half. Indexing into an array of
precomputed timer values? No. That's digital "CS thinking" :)

All you need is a photodetector. The heating coils illuminate the toast, and
the photodetector shuts the toaster off once it's dark enough. The darkness
knob adjusts the photodetector's cutoff threshold.

This system is even adaptive -- if it's cold that day, or your bread is
frozen, it'll still get toasted to the same color.

~~~
stcredzero
Why even a photodetector? Just have something that is the same distance from
the heating coils as the toast. I think many toasters just use a bimetal strip
that trips a release mechanically. You could probably get a big increase in
accuracy by putting some kind of measuring mechanism on that.

~~~
shard
Maybe a thermocouple to charge a capacitor for a timing element. But the
mechanical solution is better.

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wallflower
As the old joke goes, you cannot spell 'geek' without double-E.

I've worked with them. Much respect for electrical engineers.

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Maascamp
This is not a story about a computer scientist. It's a story about an
enterprise IT consultant.

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thamer
A mashup between "Architecture Astronauts" and "Execution in the Kingdom of
Nouns", two good reads.

~~~
davidw
Another funny one in a similar vein, taken from a real story (supposedly), is
"the complicator's gloves".

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jonmc12
EE, bottom-up problem solving; CS, top-down problem solving?

EE's that I have worked with seem to understand system function deeply first,
and build around it.

CS's usually mock-up simple versions, get it right, then optimize later.

Broad generalization I know, but do others observe this? Possible reasons: 1)
high cost of iteration in most hardware systems vs software. 2) University
educational strategy in CS vs EE. 3) Availability of easy-to-use, quality,
low-cost tools for software vs hardware.

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azharcs
Moral of the Story : Don't Complicate simple things.

~~~
Herring
Pity the other lesson - don't simplify inherently complicated things - isn't
as popular.

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ken
"Users won't buy the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical
interface. When the breakfast cooker is plugged in, users should see a cowboy
boot on the screen"

[http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/open-moko-
software.media/a...](http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/open-moko-
software.media/asuboot.png)

------
bootload
_"... The second advisor, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the
danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, "Toasters don't just turn
bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see
before you is really a breakfast food cooker. ..."_

Code sharp, not pretty?

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kenver
Given enough time the two disciplines will probably become closer, some
university departments have aready combined them both (Southampton I believe
does this).

I dread to think what sort of toasters we'll get when this happens!

~~~
aston
At MIT (where Greenspun's been for a long time) they're together in a major.
Which might explain why he's writing about how different they are.

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maxklein
Studying robotics, one learns an effective combination of engineering and
computer science theory. So I'd have given the same answer as the computer
scientist, but in ASM, low level C and Verilog.

