As a bridge between science and technology, Informatics Engineering must not
overlook that it has significant theoretical and formal fundamentals, based on
mathematics, mainly on logic, formal languages and numerical methods.
During his/her formative years, the future informatics engineer –who
sometimes seems to lose itself into the mere learning of commercial tools use-
must receive a robust education on the fundamentals which make its discipline
an engineering, as more or less different from a technology or empirical craft.
This engineering owes its fundamentals to themes as: logic, numerical
methods, data structures, automata theory, algorithm theory, graph theory,
Shannon’s information theory, computational complexity, formal languages,
latest developments related to knowledge management, and many other fields.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
The Engineering
Engineering has as definitional core the application of scientific, mathematical
–and even empirical- knowledge to the invention, improvement and utilization
of systems to the solution of practical problems, or to profit from these
scientific knowledge.
I think of engineering as some kind of “bridge” between science and
technology. As science does search knowledge without much concern about its
eventual application or profit, and technology focuses itself on practical
applications of systems, regarding the “fundamentals” only to the depth
necessary to perform effectively and efficiently, engineering sits on a middle
ground: it avoids to “lose” itself into scientific or theoretical ramblings,
because it always must have “its feet on the ground” and a pragmatic view, but
it also must concern itself with the theoretical fundamentals, more than
technology does, because one of its more important tasks is to think up and
design new practical systems, applying scientific knowledge.
Although in its pursuit to develop systems of ever increasing complexity, each
engineering branch resorts to an ever-broadening interdisciplinary knowledge
source, it is still true that each branch has a core of characteristic scientific
disciplines which defines its specialty. In the case of Informatics Engineering,
its scientific knowledge body is Computer Science.
–and even empirical- knowledge to the invention, improvement and utilization
of systems to the solution of practical problems, or to profit from these
scientific knowledge.
I think of engineering as some kind of “bridge” between science and
technology. As science does search knowledge without much concern about its
eventual application or profit, and technology focuses itself on practical
applications of systems, regarding the “fundamentals” only to the depth
necessary to perform effectively and efficiently, engineering sits on a middle
ground: it avoids to “lose” itself into scientific or theoretical ramblings,
because it always must have “its feet on the ground” and a pragmatic view, but
it also must concern itself with the theoretical fundamentals, more than
technology does, because one of its more important tasks is to think up and
design new practical systems, applying scientific knowledge.
Although in its pursuit to develop systems of ever increasing complexity, each
engineering branch resorts to an ever-broadening interdisciplinary knowledge
source, it is still true that each branch has a core of characteristic scientific
disciplines which defines its specialty. In the case of Informatics Engineering,
its scientific knowledge body is Computer Science.
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