Create Works of Art |
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| Written by Graham Stoney | |
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Great Engineers don't just design and build stuff; they create works of art in whatever medium they use. It's no accident the beautiful, elegant, well-structured designs tend to perform more efficiently and effectively than ugly, inelegant, poorly structured ones. You should think of yourself as an artist, taking pride in the inherent beauty of your creations. There is elegance in simplicity, while unnecessary complexity including gold-plating is a form of ugliness. An innovative design which meets all it's requirements while overcoming existing constraints or breaking new technological boundaries can be a source of tremendous beauty. The beauty embodied in a design may be visual or purely conceptual. A well-structured software object model can be considered beautiful to the degree that it embodies desirable concepts such as simplicity, orthogonality, re-usability and extensibility; and minimises undesirable traits such as coupling, cohesion and platform dependence. Such a structure is more likely to stand the test of time than one which lacks the desirable traits which make for a work of art. The degree to which a particular design meets its requirements is a particularly important factor in its beauty and elegance. Engineering is a practical discipline where a solid dose of pragmatism is always important. There is no point in creating designs that don't meet their requirements; such designs cannot be considered beautiful if they aren't sufficiently functional to serve their intended purpose. Any fool can design something that doesn't work, but it takes a true craftsman to produce a design which meets complex and sometimes-conflicting requirements while retaining beauty, elegance, manufacturability and design-for-test considerations. Your job is to become such a craftsman by learning the art of Engineering beautiful designs, and teaching this art to other Engineers by documenting and allowing them to review your work. Then you can truly claim to be a Great Engineer, and a Master Craftsman. Social Bookmark this page:         
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