Programming and New generations of engineers

[mecheil.edwar]

Hoping the new generations of engineers will be more lucky for programming...
nowadays any one need any design tool he is searching for some softwares... thanks god for getting softwares... But I want the developing should be with programming language itself... it should be more easy... why we do not have a programming langauge just you copy paste tool on it...
if the programming language will be easy to produce graphical user interface like autocad or robot and more easy to write the codes then every engineer can read and search and develope his own programs....
it is a dream and hoping it will be a real fact in the nearest future....

[ynopum]

Mecheil, the big problem is that the thing are completely opposite to your hopes.
Even the engineers are getting more and more consumers.
If somebody doesn't know from where comes the word "ENGINEER" in the English language - just to summarize - it is somebody who creates. That's it. The opposite of USER.

But we are living in a consumer world where the Dollar is our god. And why we need this new god - to buy things, to live in luxury. Even the commercial programs are done for this reason.

So your hopes will be lost in the ear-canals of the society, trust me!

Until the parents stop telling their children that the money is the only thing in live. Until then - do everything for the "money-god": education for money, work for money, engineering projects for money, software for money... We'll keep going the American way.

How we end - hoping that our children will not live the way we did our living, but seeing that we did everything possible to make their lives like ours.

[freequo]

I have to agree with ynopum. Many engineers that I know would rather buy some finished software package and work with it.
But I think that real engineers would have to know a little bit of programming. Programmig should became neccessety in engineering. Problems aren't always the same, and softwares cannot preform best with the models that are built-in.

[RANA WASEEM]

I agree with you about programming skills. Personally, I use Visual Basic 6.0 code combined with my design excel sheets and also standalone EXE softwares. Check my design excel sheets, You will find visual basic integration in all of those sheets. It is very easy language and if you want to install VB 6.0 just search the forum, I posted the new links for VB 6.0. If anybody interested in developing some structural programs, do contact me.

[parhyang]

in my opinions about "engineers and programming" is only possible for simple case such as steel/concrete design module. In case of develop huge programs like you mention above CAD&CAE with complete GUI's not an easy task, did you ever think about "man" and "hours"? who are the man behind it, how many Prof & Phd worked? how long times and how much money they pay?

the possibilities are opensource project such as OpenSees and Code_Aster, the institution & company powered them, not home programmer right?

btw, i'm interested too with programming/automation's and sometimes i developed my personal programs in design modules with spreadsheet&basic or python/c++. the reason is satisfaction :)

[mecheil.edwar]

Hi coolestbliss,

I learnt C++ but I found it is very difficult, and Now I try to learn C#,
But I do not know if it will be difficult or easy

is it eay to prepare some modules as Tedds Program by
using C# or VB dot net....?
can we get your advice ?

[dfense]

I learned VB.NET and I think it's enough for programs like Tedds or even more complicated programs.

[mdmh10]

Rather than programming from scratch I find it easier using VBA and Excel. C# and C++ are fairly hard to program with a semi friendly user interface in my opinion.

[elbarto_87]

Just to add my $0.02,

I agree that programming knowledge is a strong tool for engineers to have. It has been said above that often the model that a particular software packages uses might not suit your needs 100% and you may need to write your own program. I have used a number of tools out there that have given me pretty good results for a few small structural programs that I have needed. I am not sure what the OP considers an "easy" package to create GUI's for there programs and write code for, but I have had some experience with a few combination's that I have used to meet my needs and I will provide a summary below.

1) Excel + VBA - An obvious choice to start out for many calculations. Excel provides and easy way to layout and format your calculations and the list of functions available are quite easy to navigate and you are able to get results fast. You can extend your calculations using VBA when needed which opens up many windows for opportunity. It is also a easy way to share your work as Excel is widely used in the engineering community. The thing I don't like about excel is that often because it is so easy to get started working in the problem it is not defined fully at the start and as a result the workbook gets cut can changed over and over again to meet a certain need. When this happens, there is often bugs in the calculations that may or may not be easy to spot.

2) MATLB / OCTAVE / FREEMAT - Great packages for numerical analysis. The language is quite easy to pick up for engineers and working with arrays / matrices is much much easy then in excel (in my opinion). MATLAB graphs / graphics are also the best I have ever seen. MATLAB also has GUI capabilities, but I found these to be rather limited although useful for small applications. The disadvantage here is that in order to create a (Limited) GUI, you need to use MATLAB which cost quite a bit for a commercial license. It is the toolboxes that MATLAB offers that give real value to the language but for the majority of us (in civil engineering sense) we can probably get away without ever needing some of these specialized toolboxes.


3) PYTHON - Last but not least this is my favorite language. It is open source, easy to learn and easy to build programs fast. The real power comes from the number of free (typically open source) packages that you can install. There is numpy for matlab type matrix operations etc, matplotlib for matlab type plotting and thousands of other useful packages. I have been experimenting with the wxpython framework for building GUI's and I have to say I am very impressed. I generally use Python where writing something in Excel / VBA is going to be a nightmare to create and maintain or if I want to take advantage of some third party modules like the ones mentioned above. I will leave it there about python for now as I could happily go on about how useful I find the language for applications in the engineering field.

Regards elbarto

[mecheil.edwar]

If we look to the history of programming languages we can see the old programers need to spend many days just to prepare one graphical user interface " Form" ...
microsoft developed the programing languges and programers nowadays just copy paste these tools and no need to wast a lot of times and programers said that "no need to reinvent wheel"

this is what I am saying now,
no need to build for each program a graphical user interface to draw lines, circles diagrams
if the developers of programing language develope one engineering language say E++ for example with this langauge the engineer does not need to write many codes to draw diagram and lines .. he just will use ready tools and build his own programs with very
friendly graphical user interface ...
this will develope the base knolwedge of engineers and will improve the skills to task the engineering jobs...
Regards to all