[snarkpup]

I got my first job on a naval base doing avionics programming. Their philosophy was that it was better to hire engineers and teach them to code (at that time, computer science was in its infancy, I only took a small handful of computer classes), instead of taking a computer scientist and teaching them the engineering needed. We had a couple of physicists and computer scientists about to consult with, but the base was 95% engineers.

Yep. I once worked at a telecommunications equipment company whose early software products were made by engineers who learned programming. When they switched to the opposite philosophy (hiring comp sci grads with no experience in telecommunications) it was a disaster. It took entire departments to do what used to be done by individual engineers.

[Reily]

I’ve had similar problems with Comp Sci grads were they have gone through their curriculum and not take any physical science courses. Some of the code they came up with would have been great if there was no gravity, friction, strength of materials or thermodynamics!