Is this Current Generation of "Engineers" Capable?

Tell us more, whippersnapper.

(Editor Crankshaft refrains from a few admittedly minor edits.)

OK. I have had a few cold ones and typing on my iPhone is not the easiest. I would like to hear from the community of educated persons in the workforce and the workers whom have retired. I deal with a wide variety of people in the current working would and am disgusted with the lack of a professional attitude. Maybe it's because I work in Las Vegas, the largest community of transient employees. Truly, what is your opinion of the newest generation of leaders????

Educated? Here? Really?

Best engineers were our ancestors who without modern tools,measuring instruments, calculators,websites,globalisation etc discovered fundamentals of science,technology, medicine,astronomy,astrology etc. Modern engineers have too many facilities including custom made software for each kind of job. If 4 years of apprenticeship is included with good superiors they will be more competent.

I think today's engineers are better than ever. The tools and resources at hand allow us to do things incomprehensible to our forbearers. Just because many posters here use bad language and do not do web searches or searches for their own answers, does not mean that the majority of qualified engineers would speak this way.

I just ordered some parts from McMaster Carr in another state and I got an order confirmation in less than 30 seconds, they are shipping today and I will receive them tomorrow. That is amazing to me and I bet engineering has some input into systems like that.

Not to mention nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, planes, trains and automobiles and international space stations.

I think engineering is doing fine.

Is engineering doing fine, or are the "tools" that we use making things a lot faster? With the selection of "tools" available, I think that the current crop do not have to think things out like we used to do. "There's an app for that", almost anything these days. Yes I know that I have said previously that we do not have to know everything, just know where to look it up, but, even when we looked it up, we still had to do some work to get it done.

Don't get me wrong, I am a user of the tools as well, but I still think things through to select the best one available, if there is one. And,,, I make sure that I use common sense as well.

All the modern tools, in my opinion, we are losing the thought process.

The exception are those who create the apps.

"There's an app for that",

All the modern tools, in my opinion, we are losing the thought process.

I agree 100% that the newer crop of engineers or just people in general that don't know how to THINK a problem through because "There's an app for that", !

I'm guilty of it myself, one of my favorite APP's is a Conversion app that converts almost any type of measurement. However I do see my math skills becoming very lax because of the "APP".

The ones who can't think come to CR4 looking for easy answers; The ones who can think don't need to ask, they puzzle it out themselves so we seldom see them.

Yes, we have come a long way from log tables and slide rules.

I, for one, find whining old geezers to be tiresome in their complaints about "these young upstarts". These octogenarians have no idea how difficult it is to maintain high grade averages while maintaining the level of "coolness" and inebriation required of a peer group. Not to mention the eye strain caused by wearing a baseball cap backwards with sunglasses perched on top, in bright beach sunlight.

Engineers need not be xerox machines to learn from teachers,pass a written exam and say "Iam an engineer". Our forefathers tied logs together/used sail and travelled in water. They lifted heavy stone blocks more than 100ft above ground without using cranes. Archmedes used mirror to concentrate sunlight on sails of enemy ships and burnt. Leonardo Da Vinci made sketches of many machines including helicopter.

Issac Newton discovered gravity without using computer model of Universe and so on.

" Our forefathers tied logs together/used sail and travelled in water. They lifted heavy stone blocks more than 100ft above ground without using cranes."

Based on several National Geographic documentaries I have seen, these things are still being done and in many cases, without the benefit of comprehensive medical.

The stone block operation is used for 3D to 1D printing.

The olden things shown in NG were discovered centuries ago not by modern man. The credit should go to the "original idea" or "Inventor" who deserves a "Patent" but noone know who he was or where he lived or in which year(no calendar at that time) it was invented.