CSI2911 / SEG2911 / ELG2911Professional Practice

Pratique professionnelle

TOPIC 1

Introduction,

History of Computing & Engineering

Histoire d’informatique et de génieSome 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

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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

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.

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 nous-mêmes, 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 êtes-vous 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 CenturyScience

• 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- a-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 ScienceBoole: 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 companiesConsolidated Edison

General Electric

Westinghouse

IBM

AT&T

Xerox

Digital Equipment Corporation / Compaq / HP

Sperry / Unisys

Northern Electric -> Northern Telecom -> Nortel

Microsoft

Apple

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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

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