Acknowledging Engineering Education: A Personal Journey!

Why I think Engineering helped me a lot in gaining skills and gave me in-depth knowledge of things?

You might have heard people telling this thing that now-a-days, degree doesn't matter and only skills are what actually matters. This thing is true as well up to an extent. But, it's not absolute reality. While getting skills is no doubt has no comparison with getting 'only degree' but if someone is focusing on both things parallely, has a great edge on his side.

In this post, I'm going to share how my engineering journey hooked me up with awesome learning skills, sparked my love for different subjects, and gave me a deep understanding that I probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere else.

First of all lets understand what Engineering is, and what does it mean :

Engineering is a field where scientific and mathematical principles are applied to drive innovation, creating products, systems, or solutions that notably improve lives, making them easier and more comfortable. It is the art of efficiently solving real-world problems through ingenuity and technical expertise.

Starting from the very first year of Engineering, we get to learn basics of every engineering stream, get to know in reality, what actually these streams contain. I still remember how I used to think that mechanical engineering is all about making cars and bikes, no more than that and my myth got broken when I started studying the complexity of the concepts involved in it, and the variety of coursework it had, similar to how actually designing figures, in Engineering drawing works, how concisely we make figures to demonstrate complex architectural designs, etc. This experience illuminated the disparity between perception and reality, emphasizing the necessity of firsthand experience.

Now, if I talk specifically about my stream i.e, computer science, it gave me an amazing understanding of the things which I would have never studied If I was not forced to do so (I forced as we had to give exams ). So, in that way I get to learn so many amazing subjects like -

1. DSA (Data structures and Algorithms) : It is no doubt, one of the most important and foundational subject in the field of computer science or software development, and I also believe that it has a lot of hype in market and now everybody runs after it, and that is important too so its nothing special to add it because it is like very obvious and I would've learned this even if I was not from engineering background, but as it is also the part of engineering curriculum, I included that also. Learning this particular thing helped me a lot in developing my logical abilities, improving my problem solving skills and gave me a mindset to approach the optimal solutions.

2. CN (Computer Networking) : It is also, a core and fundamental subject in field of computer science and its knowledge in extremely important specially for people working in web domains or similar. It teaches you how actually information is shared over a medium, how data is transferred, how internet works, and the systems around you like WLAN, ISP, DNS, etc work. It basically lets you see the abstraction hidden behind the cables and wires you see and differentiates you from the normal people who have no Idea how the hell these black wires connect you via people sitting miles away from you. It lets you learn how these protocols, works, how server works, and how we access things using a small device which is not even present in it. So in particular, it has a lot of depth, a lot of interesting stuff to understand and learn.

3. Software Engineering/ Project Management/ Software Architectures: I grouped these subjects together because they have a lot of common stuffs in them, although they differ a lot in their own, but have some similarities. The main advantage of learning these was I got to learn that coding is not only the process involved in creating a software product. All the other SDLC (Software development life cycle) phases are equally important. And also, how the management of a full SDLC process works, and how to follow different models according to the project like waterfall, spiral, incremental, etc. So overall these stuff helped me a lot and maybe in future would give me an edge in my work also.

4. AI/ML, Computer vision: Although these things have a lot of popularity in the market and everyone aspires to learn these technologies, but in my case if I wouldn't have to pass the exams, I would not have learned them at all. Because of lack of interest, but as soon as I studied the concepts involved in AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning), I was actually surprised by these advancements. Although I'm not saying that learning these just to pass exams is enough, I know that colleges include a very basic curriculum of these subjects and lack practical knowledge, but what I am trying to explain here is that even just to pass exams, I got a chance to learn these subjects in some manner, and they somehow made me think that how amazing these are. How we create complex neural networks, how classification, regression, NLP, etc works. And if somebody gets a spark and gets the aspiration to explore these domains, then the sky is the limit and you can go deeper and understand how advanced language models like chatGPT, and other generative AI advancements work, how computer vision, etc work.

5. Cryptography and Information security: I got introduced to this subject in the 7th semester and I was amazed by the information security tactics we follow to secure the data. How amazingly the different algorithms like RSA, DES, etc alogrithms work to encrypt the data and change their format, and the techniques like asymmetric and symmetric cryptography, and I also get to learn about the different security threats and how we can protect our data from these attacks and how to restrict intruders to steal the information. And that is very very important in web development also, in understanding the potential attacks like SQL injection, DOS, Malware, etc. and how to stop these attackers from stealing your confidential information.

6. IOT (Internet of things) : From entering a mall gate to checking out from a toll plaza, and from going to the washroom and washing hands in front of an AI-Based tap to open your AC Before you enter the house, these all advancements in our daily life we see by the advancement of IOT Technology. It is so good to know that the things which we are always curious about, how actually work. So it is one of the amazing subjects I've got a chance to study in my engineering curriculum.

In total, 8 semesters and around 30-35 subjects, there is a lot to learn in engineering. But that is also a reality that the majority of the curriculum is outdated and you have to put your efforts and learn the latest trends in these things out of the box to make yourself stand out.

So overall, Engineering lets you get an overview of technologies and different domains in the market and builds a mindset so that you bring innovation by picking up any stream in it that you like.

I wrote this post to bring some points to acknowledge what I got from my Engineering journey and to point out the things that If you are studying things in a better way, there is a lot to learn and you can pick what you like from it and build your own way to it. Some people go for AI/ML some go for web development, some in the field of IOT, Data, etc. So in Engineering, you get an idea of how the technologies are working, and then your role is to decide what suits you and how you can bring innovation using it. For me, I personally had so much of intereset in the field of web development so I chose it, and every field has its own advantages, its own technical advancements, so you gotta find your passion, and infact there is never any barrier for you to switch, I also had intereset in various other field like Data science, AI. So, its not necessary that you stick to only one, for sake of interest, you can try anything. But that is also important that don't try to be jack of all trades, and master of none. Atleast have mastery in any one of them which excites you a lot.

These thoughts are personal and might differ from person to person. If you've journeyed with me through this reflection, I hope it was a worthwhile exploration of the transformative power of an engineering education.

Thank you for reading!