How come this or things like https://teachyourselfcs.com/ dont exist for other fields like mechanical engineering?
Cynically programmers are paid better than any other so-called "knowledge worker" field. Naturally, schools paid by large organizations have a vested interest in finding interesting ways to drive down wages. One of the easiest ways is to just pollute the waters with sub-par talent. As much as this website, Google, and many other FAANGs would like you to believe, the average person lacking a formal education in CS or a related field (math, engineering, etc) tend to make for the programming equivalent of one trick ponies. The wages have stayed high as a result.
Personally, I am growing tired of seeing all of these "learn to program" focused CS degrees. Even the one you have linked lacks the rigor of an ABET accredited program. For the last several years now every time someone tells me they like computer science what they have meant is they like learning to code. There's nothing wrong with this, of course, but CS is quickly going the way of the kleenex. I am not gatekeeping to be an asshole. There is so much beauty and richness of the field. It's like the people who read one pop-sci physics book and then put "physicist" in their linkedin.
None of those people can replace each other, and they all have different titles / work for different companies. Even the untrained people that spread the concrete around can't be replaced by the others; no one else has enough muscle tone / stamina to do that job!
In CS we have many, many sub-specialties, but we don't have names for those specialties.
Software engineering is a licensed branch of engineering in many places, so I don't think it's that different from other disciplines.
Everyone knows what it is, everyone makes annual use of it?
The name has expanded from "a product, sold by a particular company" to "exactly the same product, but sold by any company"?
Help me out here.
It's available, you might need to search for it and look for the flow charts to see which courses are missing from the other departments.
The challenge is, in many places, you won't be able to practice as an engineer without going through an accredited program.
If you're trying to be a maker or learn more about that, mechanical engineering is probably overkill. There are more accessible books for technologists or technicians that have a much more reduced emphasis on math.
An undergrad degree in engineering isn't sufficient to be an engineer. It's the base knowledge that gets built on during the apprenticeship ("engineer in training" or other name), and you need to learn and use the relevant laws and standards.
If you're able to state your goals a little more clearly, there may be others who can provide better advice or comments.
While not literally generally true in the US, in practice, you'll probably be hard put to land a job.
>If you're trying to be a maker or learn more about that, mechanical engineering is probably overkill.
It's not only overkill. A lot of the curriculum that doesn't involve a lab or a machine shop is probably mostly not very useful. Navier-Stokes fluid flow equations have very little to do building things.
Draw a Box: https://drawabox.com/ (Doesn't necessarily fit, but it's really good!)
So You Want to Study Mathematics: https://www.susanrigetti.com/math
So You Want to Study Philosophy: https://www.susanrigetti.com/philosophy
So You Want to Learn Physics: https://www.susanrigetti.com/physics
From poking around, this site seems to be a pointer-to-resources, rather than a road map of learning. While very useful, it seems like a tactical resource, rather than GPs strategic resources.
Another factor is that "coding" is the hot field right now.
(We're still very much at the "bloodletting, leech, and saw" part of our craft. Look at the horrors we inflict on our users.)
In Australia we have a very limited number of surgical training positions each year. We could do plenty more, but we don't... more or less because surgeons are snobs who want people to go through the same hoops they went through.
I've experienced both systems "easy to enter, next to impossible to finish" vs "highly selective, smooth sailing after that", I can't say there is a definitive superior solution.
I'm sure that a mechanical engineering course would be possible, but the course would have to clearly state that it cannot accredit the credentials to actually work in the field.
Engineers mostly need a PE licensure if they're going to be signing off on drawings and the like for regulators. Thus PEs are pretty common in civil engineering and, I assume, structural engineering in general. But most Mech Es aren't licensed in the US even if they have degrees from accredited schools.
OTOH what most people consider “CS” is more like “the ability to program”. You can get competent enough to be dangerous with a few classes and side projects.
Note that isn’t actually being competent at CS - that is quite a lot more work which just isn’t needed in practice for a lot of work that needs done.
I want a class on making the bridge stand up for idiots (like "let's write this bridge in python, and build it with cob"). I don't care if I spend twice as much on wood and hay and mud or titanium or whatever. I live in the SF Bay Area, so I can't afford the mechanical engineers I can actually hire to design my crappy little bridge, and the ones I can actually hire are incompetent. Also, I don't want to buy more tools.
(To be clear: If you're a MechE in the SF Bay Area and reading this site then I can't afford your time.)
Still, it's a shame I think that the open source community is so week because there is very advanced software out there, e.g. France has open source SW that was used to design nuclear reactors. But the community is just not there.
You can go through something like OCW and see the notes and can buy the same books used in the courses. You may need to hunt down appropriate problem sets to work on but there's a ton of material out there.
That said, as commented on up thread, you'll end up doing a lot of work to get a very theoretical not-degree, without even the benefit of labs, that is probably more or less useless in actually getting you a mechanical engineering job.
Where did I look for resources? Everywhere.