Published on: Thu Jun 09 2016
The dilemma is constant and never ending, it's always a question between choices. I remember reading Feynman's writings on choices. How for some choices eventually he decided to stop letting the question rise up. I suppose that is a clear difference between studying a natural science, like physics, vs my own field of computer engineering. An engineer is tasked with finding solutions to a problem, and frequently, also tasked with finding the optimum solution to a problem. But there is the challenge. What defines optimum? It's 'the best' surely, but any designed object is made to satisfy and function for multiple users. Is it the best for all of them? Maybe the thing is simply 'perfect', but no one can really figure out how to use it. Then the engineer has not really managed to succeed either. Before even getting started, there are choices for an engineer. What level of abstraction to design on for instance. That is one of the things which help define what sort of metrics are necessary to decide on 'the best'. The choices are nearly endless though. Sometimes when debating which course of action to take, the suggested path is something not even on the original list of considered options. This is one of those things where it's somewhat obvious. It reminds me of making a choice to clip all of some group of wires to exactly the same length. Carefully work is carried out to cut all of the wires to the same length. A bit later, it's discovered that all of the wires needed to be at least a certain length to be useable, and now none of the wires will work at all. This writing is a bit wandering, I suppose it might be a good idea to clean it up, but the blog is for writing straight thoughts, it's a very unedited blog. It's the land of first drafts. Medium is used for more finished works.