A friend and I were discussing the relative merits of LabVIEW the other day. Coming from a theoretical, software-focused background, I struggle with LabVIEW, which I think hides too many of the underlying workings of a program from the user for the sake of simplicity. My friend, on the other hand, does a lot of experimental engineering work and loves that LabVIEW frees him from the need to look at line after line of code.

This got me thinking: should engineers, particularly those working in electronics, be more prepared to work with low-level code? I mean obviously they work with it already, but my (admittedly limited) experience so far is that few engineers take the time to engineer software that is clear, testable and maintainable. In a world where both hardware and software are advancing at an exponential rate, shouldn't we be cultivating engineers who at least appreciate the need … Read more