Programming for Engineers

Programming is an essential skill for engineers of any discipline. Whether you work in electrical, mechanical, civil, chemical or any other engineering speciality, you will be a better engineer if you master the skill of computer programming.

Not only there is intrinsic value in instructing computers how to perform useful calculations, but cultivating this ability will also endow you with an algorithmic way of thinking which is useful in other, non-digital, engineering tasks. You will be a more well-rounded and overall better problem solver.

As you train your brain to think in less concrete layers of abstraction, you will develop an otherwise underutilised reasoning muscle that will give you an edge in your daily professional endeavours. Not only will you be able to model systems, perform intricate calculations and implement complex algorithms, but you will also be able to document your knowledge and express yourself in a very powerful manner.

More than ever, in this era of AI-driven probabilistic results, you will greatly benefit from clearly understanding how these black boxes operate, their limitations, their real value and more importantly, how to outperform them with deterministic and predictable results.

As an Mechanical and Electrical Engineer by profession and Computer Programmer by passion I have been building my own software tools for the last 29 years.

My career has taken me across multiple engineering areas including Design, Manufacturing, Field Operations, Maintenance, Refurbishment, Product Development, Asset Management, Customer Service, Process Improvement, Consulting and Software Development.

Mainly driven by challenges that I have faced on my day-to-day work as well as my own laziness and refusal to do repetitive and menial tasks, I always find myself creating software applications to automate all sorts of aspects and tasks of my job.

Along this journey, and while researching to fill my own needs, I have also come across great engineering-related software projects scattered all over the web. There are resources out there ranging from open-source projects to commercial products that could benefit engineering students, enthusiasts and senior professionals alike.

In the hope that other engineers would benefit from these experiences, I created this newsletter to share these ideas. In this newsletter you will find essays, software and book reviews, analyses, videos and any other relevant information for people working in the various areas of this vast space.

Ultimately, I want to write it to my younger self, who all those years ago wondered if this passion would ever have any practical use in his chosen field of engineering. It turns out it did. I hope this strikes a chord in some of the younger engineering minds out there and proves a useful resource in their own journeys in this fascinating profession.

As an additional resource, I will be posting all these articles to the Engineers Tools website which contains a wealth of related information accumulated over many years of research in this topic.

If this is something that interests you, subscribe to this newsletter and share your thoughts and feedback in the comments. I hope you find it useful and look forward to hear any queries or suggestions you might have.