CSI2911 / SEG2911 / ELG2911
Professional Practice
Pratique professionnelle
TOPIC 1
Introduction,
History of Computing & Engineering
Histoire d’informatique et de génie
Some of the material in these slides is derived from slides produced by Sara Basse, the Author of the “Gift of
Fire” textbook , and also other professors who have taught this course including Stan Matwin, Liam Peyton,
Emil Petriu and Claude D’Amours
Outline of the course / Plan du cours
See the syllabus on the web / Voir le syllabus
http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~tcl/eecs2911/
Many of the slides are adapted from those supplied by the textbook
authors, and other professors who have taught this course including
Emil Petriu, Stan Matwin, Claude D’Amours, Carlisle Adams, and
Liam Peyton
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Teaching assistants /
assistants à l'enseignement
Amir Afrasiabi Rad
Ashwin Panchapakesan
Lei Chen
Farzin Farhadi-Niaki
Vincent Barnabé-Lortie(devoirs en Français)
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Why this course? (1) Pourquoi ce cours?
Computing and electrical engineering have a
tremendous positive impact we want to enhance
Informatique et de génie électrique ont un impact
extrêmement positif que nous voulons améliorer
E.g.
• Allowing us to communicate and access information in
ways we never imagined / Ils nous permettent de
communiquer et d'accéder à l'information de façon que
nous n'avons jamais imaginé
• Giving us entertainment and fun / Ils nous donnent
divertissement et de plaisir
• Stimulating the economy with business opportunities /
Ils stimulent l'économie avec des activités commerciales
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Why this course? (2) Pourquoi ce cours?
Positive / Positif …
• Generating medical breakthroughs by analysing the
genome and proteome / Ils génèrent des des découvertes
médicales en analysant le génome et du protéome
• Creating and distributing the energy civilization needs /
Ils créent et distribuent l'énergie nécessaire à
civilisation
• Making us all more productive and comfortable at work
and play / Ils nous font tous plus productifs et à l'aise
quand nous travaillons et jouons
—Automating uninteresting, repetitive tasks / Ils
automatisent les tâches qui sont sans intérêt ou
répétitif
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Why this course? (3) Pourquoi ce cours?
But, technology can have a tremendous negative impact
we want to avoid / Mais, la technologie peut avoir un
impact négatif énorme que nous voulons éviter
• Disasters and other societal problems can be caused by /
Les catastrophes et d'autres problèmes de société peut
être causée par
—Critical incidents where technology was at fault / Les
incidents critiques où la technologie était en faute
- Planes, trains, spaceships and automobiles crashing /
Accidents d'avions, les trains, les vaisseaux spatiaux et les
voitures
- Overdosing patients / surdosage des patients
- Failures of financial systems / Défaillances des systèmes
financiers
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Why this course? (4) Pourquoi ce cours?
Negative / Negatif
—Management failures / Échecs majeurs de gestion
- Huge cost over-runs from poorly run projects / Énormes
dépassements de coûts des projets mal gérés
—Privacy breaches / violations de la confidentialité
—The actions of hackers and other criminals / Les
actions des pirates et autres criminels
—Etc.
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The solution: Professionalism /
La solution: le professionnalisme
• Taking responsibility for our work / Assumer la
responsabilité pour le travail que nous faisons
• Pride in quality work / La fierté de la qualité du travail
• Acting ethically to clients, colleagues, management,
society and the environment / Agir de façon éthique pour
les clients, les collègues, la direction, la société et
l'environnement
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Professionalism(e) (2)
• Ensuring we are
—properly educated
—know a little of the history of our field
—have depth of understanding
—apply best practices
• S'assurer que
—nous sommes bien renseignés
—nous connaissons un peu de l'histoire de notre
domaine,
—nous avons profondeur de compréhension
—nous appliquons les meilleures pratiques
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Professionalism(e) (3)
• Understanding risks, preventing failures /
Comprendre les risques et la prévention des échecs
• Continual improvement of ourselves, our profession and
our technology / L'amélioration continue de nousmêmes, notre profession et notre technologie
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Disciplines in EECS (1)
Electrical engineers / Les ingénieurs électriques
• Since 1800s
• Design power, electronics, communication, control
systems, instrumentation and devices
Computer scientists / Les informaticiens
• Since 1940s
• Develop software, data structures, algorithms, hardware
and scientific underpinnngs of computing
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Disciplines in EECS (2)
Computer engineers / Les ingénieurs informaticiens
• Offshoot of EE and CS in 1970s
• Design hardware and hardware-software systems
Software engineers / Les ingénieurs logiciels
• Offshoot of computer science in 1980s
• Apply engineering methods to large scale software
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Background questions /
Questions générales
Answer with Top Hat
What program are you in? / Dans quel programme êtesvous inscrit?
How well do you understand English? / Comment
comprenez-vous l’anglais?
How well do you understand French? / Comment
comprenez-vous le français?
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Historical perspective: Antiquity
Science
• Geometry, Algebra, Philosophy,
Production of goods and services
• Artisans, Guilds
Engineering
• Military Engineering
• Early civil engineering – Heating systems, viaducts
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Historical perspective: 17th - 18th Century
Science
• Calculus, Logic, Chemistry, Physics
Production of goods and services
• Still largely artisans and guilds
Engineering
• Civil and Mechanical engineering
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Historical perspective: 19th Century
Science
• Rapid advances in all areas. Biology develops
Production of goods and services
• Industrial revolution; railroads for distribution
Engineering
• Many core principles developed
• Ability to draw up specifications based on an
understanding of the science and engineering principles
• Automobiles, telegraph, telephone, electricity, control
• Mechanical computing: Punched cards at IBM
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Early 20th Century
Early concepts underlying computer science
• Information theory, concepts of computability
Mass production
World wars: Horror, but impetus for innovation
Key disasters – See coming slides
• Quebec bridge: Engineering in Canada
• New London School Explosion: Engineering in the US
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Quebec Bridge Disaster: Aug 29, 1907
Quebec Bridge is (still) the
longest cantilevered span
in the world: 550m
Le pont de Québec est le plus
long en porte- à-faux au
monde: 550,
Collapsed during
construction in 1907
Lepont s’est effondré pendant
sa construction en 1907
• 75 workers killed / 75 morts
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Quebec Bridge Disaster - 2
Bedrock location determined span length
Theodore Cooper (New York) hired as consulting
engineer.
• Responsible for design and guaranteeing bridge strength
Beams, columns, shipped from Pennsylvania
Two halves built from each shore to meet in the middle
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Quebec Bridge Disaster - 3
As south side reached 200m, some compression
members started bending
“Serious”: Site engineer McLure
• Construction suspended
Exchange of telegrams with Cooper for 3 weeks
• McLure then travels to New York
Cooper convinced
• “Add no more load till after due consideration”
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Quebec Bridge Disaster - 4
Chief site engineer Hoare mistakenly resumed work
Collapse
Royal commission findings:
• Serious errors in design
• Actual stresses above safe limits
• Consulting engineer Cooper rarely visited
• Chief site engineer Hoare not technically competent to
supervise
• Communication problems
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Quebec Bridge Disaster - 5
A realization developed that only competent, ethical
people should practice engineering
• Professional engineering licensing introduced
• “Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer” (iron ring)
instituted
Another collapse in 1916 when hoisting new middle
section into place kills 13
Bridge finally completed in 1917
• Still in use, although a modern autoroute bridge is now
next to it
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Quebec and Pierre Laporte bridges today
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New London School Explosion: March 1937
Gas explosion due to faulty engineering killed over 295
students and teachers
Prompted Texas and other states to require engineering
licensure
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Top Hat question
Engineering failures today
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A Few Key People in Electrical Engineering
Volta, Ampere, Ohm, Faraday, Maxwell: Key electrical
scientists that developed core concepts
Joseph Fourier: Fourier Transform
Samuel Morse, Charles Bright: Telegraphy
Edison, Bell, Tesla, Westinghouse, Marconi: Key
innovators in power, telephony and radio
Claude Shannon: Information theory
Charles Jenkins, Philo Farnsworth, John Baird: TV
Darlington, Shockley: Transistors
Jack Kilby, Robert Noyce: Integrated circuits
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A Few Key People in Computer Science
Boole: Boolean logic
Blaise Pascal, Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace: mechanical calculating
devices
Alan Turing, John Von Neumann, Church: key concepts of algorithms
and computing
Grace Hopper: Compilers
Vanevar Bush, Tim Berners-Lee: Hypertext, WWW
Edsger Dijkstra, CAR Hoare: Algorithms
Alan Kay, Adele Goldberg, Bjarne Stroustrup: Object orientation
Donald Knuth: The Art of Computer Programming
Marvin Minsky, Herbert Simon: Artificial Intelligence
Niklaus Wirth, John McCarthy: Programming languages
Bill Joy, Linus Torvalds: Unix/Linux
Bill Gates, Steve Jobs: Corporate innovators
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Key companies
Consolidated Edison
General Electric
Westinghouse
IBM
AT&T
Xerox
Digital Equipment Corporation / Compaq / HP
Sperry / Unisys
Northern Electric -> Northern Telecom -> Nortel
Microsoft
Apple
Google
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Key institutions
AIEE + IRE = IEEE – 129 years of history
IEE -> IET: Electrical Engineering in Britain
ACM – Association for Computing Machinery
CIPS – Canadian Information Processing Society
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Rapid Pace of Change
1940s: The first computer is built
1956: First hard-disk drive weighed a ton and stored five megabytes
1964: Attempts at having a computer act like a human
• Eliza http://www.manifestation.com/neurotoys/eliza.php3
1991: Space shuttle had a one-megahertz computer
Today: Pocket devices hold a terabyte (230 ~= 109 bytes) of data
Today: Automobiles have many 1GHz computers
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Recent and upcoming developments:
Electronics and power systems
Spintronics – harnessing electron spin
Memristors – Low power consumption devices (memory
resistors)
• When current flows in one direction, resistance increases
• When current flows in the other direction resistance
decreases.
Ubiquitous photovoltaics
Smart grid
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Recent and Upcoming Developments:
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
Artificial intelligence can solve a number of expert,
difficult tasks
• Machine translation is becoming closer to reality
Robotic devices are often special-purpose devices, and
may require AI to function
• Can operate in space, in hazardous situations, or perform
routine physically laborious tasks
Machine Learning and Data Mining methods or
algorithms enable adaptive systems
• Can help us understand patterns in data, e.g. for weather
and business forecasting, detecting security violations etc.
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Recent and Upcoming Developments:
Assisting the disabled
Restoration of abilities, productivity and independence
• Screen readers and scanners for the blind
• Speech recognition for the deaf
• Prosthetics with motion sensors
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