On Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:28:41 +0000, Invisible wrote:

>>> Words fail me... It's like somebody using a chainsaw to slice a loaf
>>> of bread, and seeing absolutely nothing wrong with doing so. What do
>>> you *say* to someone like that?! >_<
>> 
>> "Have a chainsaw"?
> 
> LOL! Yeah, I guess so...
> 
> The guys over there are now arguing that since you need to know physics
> to be a mechanical engineer, and you need to know chemistry to be a
> laboritory chemist, why shouldn't you need to know predicate calculus,
> abstract algebra and set theory to be a computer programmer?
> 
> Seriously, WTF??

I would think set theory would be useful for dealing with certain data 
types.

The one that always got me was needing to know engineering physics to be 
a computer programmer.  Seriously, my CS degree program was heavy on 
modeling and simulation, but we had to take engineering physics (rather 
than a course on engineering physics tailored for CS majors, we just had 
to take the straight EP course).

But there's a bit of a difference between people who actually design 
airplanes needing to know EP and those who deal with simulations of 
airplanes.  The same depth of knowledge is needed because real or 
simulated, the math and physics are the same for the airfoil.  But for 
the person doing simulation, there's this thing called a library that we 
can link into to figure out the fancy math for us - so we don't need to 
memorise arcane formulae.  We just need to know the inputs to a function 
and the outputs from a function.

My EP professor disagreed.

Jim

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