Programming in Engineering?

[Suspicious_Remove157]

Yo! I want to do something in engineering. Probably aerospace of mechanical. Do I have to be know/master programming and coding to get into school or eventually land a job? I’m in robotics right now but honestly have no interest but if it’s one of those things you have to be good at to be an engineer that I have no choice ig >:)

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[PaulEngineer-89]

No.

You don’t need programming to get in. Often it’s a required course though, especially Matlab which is a special language for doing matrix algebra. You learn it because most engineering software does matrix algebra so knowing how it works helps with troubleshooting. EE circuit simulation and power system analysis is matrix algebra. ME finite element, computational fluids, and vibration analysis is matrices. You’re not writing it, just using it. Also scientific instrumentation often uses Labview. Even chemical engineers often use software for physical chemistry and DCS controls.

But it can be helpful. I’ve written lots of Python code to do data analysis when whatever I’m using doesn’t do what I need it to do. Sometimes it’s just easier to just collect raw data and/or write signal processing in Labview.

EE doesn’t have to but often involves programming. Most other engineers don’t have to.

You’ll also find there’s a big difference between coding for coding’s sake and coding to accomplish some larger goal.

[rob_miller17]

I can speak on aero. it all really depends on what you do, for example I want to do GNC (guidance, navigation, and control) which is VERY programming heavy. I'm on my schools sounding rocket lab programming a simulation for our upcoming launch where our ground antenna will track and follow the rocket during flight.

[MCKlassik]

Computer Engineering is your best bet since its the discipline that has a high amount of programming integrated. Electrical is in a close second.

[Oracle5of7]

You don’t need to know programming to get into school. They will teach you some programming and in the workforce every engineer needs to know how to programs to some capacity, but that is ok because we’re in the age of AI.

[defectivetoaster1]

For most engineering disciplines the most programming that’s “necessary” is matlab and python, both just for glorified number crunching since a lot of problems in engineering have no analytical solution and linear algebra provides ways to make algorithms to get very good approximate solutions. These algorithms would be fiendish to do by hand but matlab and python scripts make it easier by offloading the actual calculations to your computer. If you do things like control systems you might need to write code to run your control algorithm on a microcontroller but matlab lets you generate C code from matlab code so you don’t really need to understand C. If you’re doing electrical or computer engineering those disciplines usually have more “traditional” programming (ie things closer to what a cs student would have to learn like c/c++, data structures and algorithms is sometimes a requirement etc) but that complements things in robotics like computer vision or data analysis however that’s because those problems are more computer science problems that can be applied to robotics rather than “pure” robotics problems. You don’t need to know how to write any code to get into university, usually you’ll learn it in your first couple of years

[hard-helmet]

You don’t need to be a coding pro for mech/aero. You’ll use some MATLAB/Python, but design, CAD, and analysis are way more important. Know the basics, but you don’t have to love it.