Alan Kay (and Habr's collective intelligence): what books form the labor engineer's thinking

As in science, medicine, consulting and in many other areas, I think that in this case there are problems of temperament, as well as knowledge - there is a kind of "vocation" here. And, I think, a kind of "attitude."

A key part of engineering is to do things, especially to do them right away and do them well. Much of the engineering came from “tinkering” (aka “hacking”), adding to this the desire for “fundamental design and creation”, “integrity”, etc. All the great engineers I know personally have deep moral convictions about what they do, and why this "should be done as best as possible." Part of the imposition of temperament on science is a kind of "laboratory rat", which is most happy when it is in the course of an experiment or the creation of a new experimental apparatus.

Henry Petroski is an engineer who has written a number of very good books on engineering , and they should be re-read in order to gain basic knowledge and understand engineering in general.

Another great engineer who writes well is Sam Florman .
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There are several excellent speeches and an essay by Richard Hamming ... ( note. We are actively translating them here on Habré)

If we make a Venn diagram of the historical progression of “STEM”, we will get a partially duplicate “TEMS”: “Tinkering” (manual labor), “Mechanical Engineering”, “Mathematics” and “Science”. Most modern practitioners get good results in all these areas, and most of the best things are at the intersection of them all. Great do-it-yourself teams are made up of people who do a bit of everything, but are very good specialists in one or two areas. During my career, I experienced the most fun, working with great engineers, and I have engineering experience from high school, which helps a lot (although I am mistaken in science and mathematics).

As for the advice, it is not only about messing with things and doing them, and not only fluently owning all TEMSs, but finding internships and stuff where real things are created, especially heavy things. Much can be learned by observing how experts do their work, and doing something with them.

A big revelation for me was the “attitude” towards the ARPA community. The whole society is simply “accustomed to trusting their imagination and doing everything necessary to make the vision real.” In such a culture, with such confidence and with such a track record, studying is much easier.

MagisterLudi

Recently, I flew to Chita, telling schoolchildren how I came up with the idea of launching a crowdsourcing satellite and building a jetpack, and I, preparing for the performance, threw a list of references, but he was not exactly a schoolboy, but still bring it here: