Engineers vs. Computer Scientists

Well, there are people who say “the glass is half empty” and there are people who say “the glass is half full.” There are others who would say “the glass is at 50% of capacity.” We call those people engineers.

We don’t let them near the microwave oven, for fear that they will take it apart and put it back together according to some twisted plan only they know, and the next time we go to melt some Cheez Whiz for our nachos, we wind up starting World War III. I’m a computer science major, so I frequently say “I don’t care how much stuff’s in the glass, just keep the damn thing away from the keyboard.”

Then the engineers laugh and say something like “I won’t spill this 591 milliliter container of Mountain Dew on your computer,” which they of course immediately do, prompting a bitter argument followed by a violent brawl, which lasts for a number of minutes until someone notices that Baywatch is on, and everyone puts their differences aside and stares at the screen and says things like “There’s no way those can be real.” And an engineer does some quick calculations and says something like “The support structure alone would weigh several tons.” And a computer science major would say something like “Well, if they had an SGI and a 32-bit video card, they could use a 3D modeler/renderer to texture map them on there…” And someone else would say “Who cares? Just look at ‘em.”

And then we would all agree that technology was wonderful, no matter how it worked, and then we all go down to Burger King and make fun of the English majors hard at work.