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Comment by formula1 | Hacker News Reader

No. Engineers are house builders or railroad workers or car mechanics. Except they have deeper knowledge in their subject often to the point that nobody else can do sonething as well.

There is no "uniqueness" in engineering, there is only a balancing of time, money, reliability, reusability and other purely mathematical concepts. If something is unique then it is often better than alternatives or worse than alternatives. Engineering can be considered a sport much easier that an art.

Art can have seperate equivelents. Like a paintng of a beautiful landscape or a painting depicting pain. Both may have the same price but both are unique. Even two portraits of the same person will be different simply because two individuals did it or how style changes with time.

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Looking at some code I see beauty, other code causes me pain.

That can arguably be attributed to experience and cleanliness.

If you walk into a garage it can be dirty, greasy and disorganized. It can also be labeled, clean and organized. Hardly considered art

Code or art?

http://www.ioccc.org/2013/birken/birken.c

Ok. Yes its asthetically pleasing. I feel comfortable looking at it. But...

its completely unreasable because all the variable names have been mangled and there is no whire space to organize the blocks. At this point it looks like a puzzle.

If you consider the algorithm an art, I disagree. Algorithms are either more efficient them their predecessors or are efficient for a niche.

The balancing of time, reliability and reuseability with the concerns of your project as well as the concerns of your staff is very much an art form because it involves a lot of social and psychological understanding balanced with an ability to communicate the decisions and reasons effectively.

If it was purely mathematical, it would all be pretty straightforward.

> concerns of your staff, social/psychological understanding

I was under the impression we were talking about engineers here. But if we are talking from an organizational standpoint, your goal is to have an efficient, lowcost team. Management is not an art just like farming is not an art. There is a right way to do things to maximize money, right way to fo things "ethically" and wrong ways to do things which lead to failure.

Your own personality will often get in the way of your job. It is pretty straightforward because the goal is ultimately efficiency and every "question" has a logical "answer".

So we can program a machine (removing our egos from the equation) to properly manage everything?

If not, there's probably still some art left in management.

I dont think ignorance is a form of art. Opportunity and discovery maybe.

Art itself isnt imperfect, every creation has value and is a mix of natures effect on the artist abd the artists own intentions. Imperfect management just leads to turnover of valuable employees, wastefulness and low morale

But that's because today's definition of engineer is narrow while it used to be more broad (e.g. Eiffel was an engineer). An artist is also a craftsman, except he uses his craft to express himself.

> there is only a balancing of time, money, reliability, reusability and other purely mathematical concepts

And therein lies the art. An experienced engineer can come up with simple, elegant solutions that balance those things. Novice engineers struggle to find a good balance and tend to over-complicate the solution.

That's not art. That's craft.

Is art not a craft?

Art and craft are different - art implies some semantic depth or statement about society.

Crafts are things like coffee mugs or portraits - they require immense skill and can only benefit from creativity, but don't really have anything to say about anything. That doesn't mean they're not good or valuable, though.

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