I thought this thread (if I can call it that) would belong in MPSIMS until I saw how lovable those threads are. I chose 1980 to help the advancement of my proposition that it is software engineering that has seen the greatest amount of innovation. There have been extraordinary buildings and bridges erected this century, and since 1980 manufacturing engineering innovation has enabled the creation of wondrous new gadgets. An immense amount of detailed work has been put into most engineering disciplines. Software engineering has seen the elaboration of the OO paradigm, lots of invention in networking and data mining, advancement in neural and vector computing and a huge amount of stuff I know nothing about, but what motivates me to ask the question is thinking about the amount of innovatory programming needed to bring computer gaming to where it is.
There isn’t any factual answer to this question, but consider this:
8086 uP: 29,000 transistors operating at 4.77 MHz built with 3um min feature size
Core Duo uP: 151,000,000 transistors at 2.5 GHz with .065um min feature size
That’s roughly 1980 - 2006.
It’s a little tough to say, just because the timeframe you picked includes the birth of the personal computer, which has had an enormous impact on all of the engineering disciplines. Still, software engineering was still in its infancy back then (and arguably still is today), so it’s a good pick. If I had to guess a second, I’d pick electrical engineering just because of the technology that was necessary for the rise in personal electronics.
I’m not sure computers really qualify: I’d suggest that they’re more of an enabler, not an end result in themselves. And you’ve chosen a really short time-span. There are projects which take years to build. I’m thinking of things like the Milau bridge.
And in aerospace we’ve gone backwards in some regards: no Concorde, no advance on the Space Shuttle, etc.
I would wag nano-technology. Not that it seems really useful yet, but it has opened the door for future inventions.
Sorry, got to disagree. If a new supersonic airliner was built today - even a “cheap” one - it would be far more advanced engineering-wise than Concorde. Ditto the original Shuttle. It’s not projects, it’s knowledge.
The exact same thing is true of materials engineering (the development of new plastics, alloys, and so on).
Since no factual answer is possible, let’s get informed opiinions in IMHO.
Moved. samclem
But you have to take into account that current engineering cannot solve the problems that killed supersonic airliners. There are none on the horizon from either Airbus or Boeing and development time + the lifespan of jet airliners delivered today is pushing 50 years. That looks pretty dire for such a thing taking off on a large scale in my lifetime.
Engineering is a real-world discipline and has to be graded against real-world successes doesn’t it? We can’t have supersonic airliners because they can’t figure out a way to make them efficient enough to be worth it and there are also those pesky sonic booms. Airliner engineering hasn’t gone exactly backwards but it hasn’t gone very far forwards in absolute terms in the past few decades. They are down to incremental rather than revolutionary improvements now.
I’d pick microelectronics (if you accept that as a “part of engineering”). Or perhaps optoelectronics or some parts of optics such as lasers. Or, perhaps, high frequency radio and high speed data transmission such as digital satellite systems and telephone communications.
It isn’t the space age. 30 or 40 years ago we all expected computers to become the size of refrigerators, and talk, and not interact with typical people. But we also assumed many families would have some sort of aircraft in the driveway. I think passenger service to the moon, and talking HAL computers, as shown in 2001: A Space Oddesy (about 11 years earlier), accurately reflects the balance between advancements that typical people anticipated. Space travel sure didn’t do well by that standard.
:puts Civil Engineer hat on:
I’d WAG environmental engineering. Back in the 80’s we’d see mass grading of acres and acres of land with never a thought to sediment pollution. Now we get permits, from the state for water runoff control plans.
Also wetlands. Back in the 80’s one never heard of a 404 permit. Now everyone must get their property assessed for wetlands; mitigation and remediation are everywhere.
Oops … engineers can’t code either … mutter…
Mayhap, but it’s not being done, is it?
Is that for when you go back and can’t find any wetlands?
I’ll go with microelectronics also. Object oriented programming existed in 1980, if not C++ and Java, but I don’t see that big an advance. If I were transported from then until now, I would not have a big problem keeping up. However process nodes used today for ICs would be considered impossible back then, and most design tools, like synthesis, didn’t exist then. A standard training tool in Bell Labs just after 1980 was a netlist covering everything on a board, except for the little processor. No way that would be feasible today. Someone coming forward in time would be totally lost.
Pardon?
A 404 permit allows a landowner to disturb wetlands on their property. Sometimes the area is small enough to be permitted without mitigation; other times the landowner must purchase or create wetlands elsewhere, to offset the loss of the original area.
The joke is that 404 is the http error code returned when the domain you’re requesting exists but the page doesn’t.
Does anyone want to muse on the fantastic, possible-to-predict-only-with-hindsight, advances in programming (which, as well as being a branch of engineering when done seriously is an arena of pure idea) that have brought us Zelda, Halo, et al?
I’m not sure that it’s really worth separating games programming out from software engineering.
>I’m not sure that it’s really worth separating games programming out from software engineering.
Bet it is, if you’re a software engineer…