Trial and Error by Nick Abel

In the engineering field, there is a lot of trial and error. For the past month or so, I have been working on building and programming a Lego NXT Robot. My team and I spent many hours adjusting many settings in the program and trying out different build iterations to see which was most efficient in parts used while still being able to complete the required task. This is just like the real world, where you will be given a budget and told to make something that uses all your resources in the most efficient manner while still being able to perform the required task completely within a reasonable amount of time. However, success is usually achieved through hard work and perseverance through many failures along the way. You may design something that does the task perfectly but is too much over budget, so you need to look at what is unnecessary in your design. Or maybe your design is under budget but doesn't perform tasks as well as the job specifies it needs to.

     Programming can be just as intensive. In order to best prevent bugs from appearing in your code, you need to make small adjustments to it each iteration so you can know what causes any problems that may appear. It is also impossible to test for every bug that could possibly exist in code, so it is important to be able to conserve virtual resources as well. While you can type virtually infinite lines of code, the more code you have, the harder it is to debug when you have an issue. Plus, if you are trying to teach your code to someone else so they can work on it or adapt it to their own use, the fewer lines of code there are, the easier it would be for both parties.

     Engineering requires a lot of patience. Sure things can get frustrating at times, and sometimes you just have to take a break to relax. But the most important thing is to keep fighting your way through the problem until you discover a solution, because once you finally design a solution that perfectly fits the job assignment, it feels great to have accomplished it. Remember to always keep your goal in mind and to fight through anything that gets in your way of achieving that goal.