

Ask HN: Teach me to think like an engineer - interpares

A few years ago I often heard this advice: go to law school, because it will teach you how to think. Nowadays I keep hearing, reading or experiencing for myself that law school has been replaced with engineering, with many pundits citing someone&#x27;s background in engineering as the key factor that helped them solve all manner of non-engineering problems. For example, from the WaPo piece on Edward Snowden currently on the frontpage: &quot;Snowden is an orderly thinker, with an engineer’s approach to problem-solving.&quot; How can I learn to be an &quot;orderly thinker&quot;?
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sharemywin
engineers have all sorts of tricks(mostly math or alogrithems) for solving
problems. remember story problems from school. we had them in our engineering
classes.

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thenerdfiles
_Write unit tests first._

Or rather: Consider for yourself that everything in the universe, from _some_
perspective or other ( _not_ a God's Eye View/Perspective — but assuming you
had all the facts of the case, but simply were of a different position to
review it), under _some_ context or other, behaves most perceptibly w/r/t a
quantized model of interpretation.

Then, do a bubble sort on all of their secondary properties, or even _all of
the things_ , whatever in your best estimation viably counts as a thing. Is
"hatred" a thing? Is "liberty" a thing? Is the liberty in _this_ woman a
thing? Is the liberty in _this_ man a thing? Does this man's liberty follow
from this woman's liberty? Do parakeets sense justice? Is my cat the grand
chancellor of the litterbox? Do I rob this man of his livelihood if I take his
bagel?

Some of these considerations are structurally interesting, but often times go
to the back of the list.

