Engineering360: "10 Books Engineers Should Read in 2018"

Where's the cook book ? Engineers got to eat when they ain't engineering. Besides cooking is sorta engineering.

Engineers use a different kind of cookbook. Their cookbooks won't be found in the food/diet section. It seems to me that when they ain't engineering, they ain't cooking either. Even cooking food is an engineering event. After all, how good can food be if it's not engineered properly?

There are so many more engineering fields these days that it's hard to keep track of them. There's social engineering, aerospace, biotech, communications, instrumentation, nuclear and manufacturing engineering, etc. Every new technology creates a new branch of engineering. I remember when there was only mechanical, electrical and chemical engineering.

Same as me. I started out without any secondary school certificates when I was 15, where the choice was bricklayer, plumber, carpenter and electrician. I chose the latter and got a job as an apprentice - 5 years training on low pay that turned into 6 years because union rules meant you could not be qualified and on full pay until you were 21. The low pay linked to "your'e paid for what you know, not what you do".

So I set about 'learning' to better myself. It took me a further 10 years of day-release and night school and book-learning homework to get an HNC.

Which at the time was not good enough by itself to gain entry to the IEE where 15 years of work experience counted for nothing.

I abandoned electrical contracting to branched out into compressed air mechanical engineering - with further 5 years study and research - that was dismissed by the IEE because " it is not electrical engineering ..".

What crap! Stuff them! Meanwhile I did eventually qualify for the IET, but that is a long story.

It is the opposite today however - in fact it is unlikely you will qualify for entry without valuable experience in associated engineering disciplines - re emphasis on brownie points for Continued Professional Development - CPD.

They even take voluntary unpaid social work in engineering projects into account.

I have done it all, but too late for me. The point is: specific to the topic: ...where do engineers get all this knowledge from unless they have access to modern literature and jobs that link numerous disciplines.

Aren't (first-time workers) supposed to get valuable work-life lessons from people whey work with, and under, as guidance beyond ''do it my way, because I tell you to'' ?...

Going back far enough, did they not essentially start out as subdivisions of Civil Engineering?

If you go WAY back, They were probably engineering before there was even a word for it.

They really should add ''Colossus'' by D. L. Felton...

(...or at least suggest seeing it's movie, ''Colussus, the Forbin Project''...)

Now there was a real (engineering construction).