Gopal.V's Journal: Engineer Think - phenomenon

Very recently I read a small quote about how educational discipline makes people think differently.

Physicists see equations as a reflection of reality.
Engineers see reality as a reflection of equations.
Mathematicians haven't made the connection.

It somehow struck me as being coincidental that I always thought of range of a projectile as an equation rather than the equation belonging to the range of the projectile. In fact the equation is an approximate prediction minus all the effects of wind, friction and totally ignoring bernoulli's principle. In other words I had just realized that I am an engineer.

A couple of years ago I wrote a rather controversial (well, at least for the people who read it) commentary about Engineers in general called Now, that's odd. According to most people who read it, it sort of describes me - not a generic engineer. Read it, if you are not my parents, sisters or co-workers. And weep.

Anyway, one thing is true - Engineers usually have lots of solutions in search of a problem. For example, I want to do something with FireFox - but I have no problems with the way it works right now. We're all full of solutions, we just need somebody's problems.

Cue the engineer, physicist, and mathematician jokes.