Mar 25
Engineering vs Science
I laughed when I was rooting through some of my old photos.
A lot of people don’t realize that you can’t actually just study Computer Science at MIT. It’s always part of the broader course discipline of “Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.”
For the sadistic TAs who tormented us on Friday nights, having us endlessly build circuit boards while tearing out burnt mosfets and throwing them into this ever growing pile — thanks. It was an important lesson.
Real life is messy and more like EE than it is, computer science. Theoretical ideas of complexity bounds never decay — but circuit elements sure do. Is the resistor just not up for it today? Is it tired? How much voltage did I put through this stuff again?
It was maddening for someone who wanted to just write code and not deal with the realities of physical things decaying right in front of me for no reason. But in retrospect it was a more important idea than I thought at the time.
I felt this way with running a company sometimes as well — is this person/division just tired? Do we have to swap it out? It’s not an easy conversation to have but it’s a realistic one.
Building stuff and maintaining stuff is always a messy process. Never as elegant as you think, but still rewarding in the end, when the damn circuit board finally plays the music you were assigned to showcase.
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