CSI2911 / SEG2911 / ELG2911 Professional Practice Pratique

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CSI2911 / SEG2911 / ELG2911Professional Practice
Pratique professionnelle

• TOPIC 1
• Introduction,
• History of Computing Engineering
• Histoire dinformatique et de génie
• Some of the material in these slides is derived
  from slides produced by Sara Basse, the Author of
  the Gift of Fire textbook , and also other
  professors who have taught this course including
  Stan Matwin, Liam Peyton, Emil Petriu and Claude
  DAmours

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Outline of the course / Plan du cours

• See the syllabus on the web / Voir le syllabus
• http//www.site.uottawa.ca/tcl/eecs2911/
• Many of the slides are adapted from those
  supplied by the textbook authors, and other
  professors who have taught this course including
  Emil Petriu, Stan Matwin, Claude DAmours,
  Carlisle Adams, and Liam Peyton

3
Teaching assistants /assistants à l'enseignement

• Yang Xue YXUE063_at_uottawa.ca
• Nima Zaker NZAKE034_at_uottawa.ca
• Martin Scaiano MSCAI056_at_uottawa.ca
• Xiaoguang Wang BWANG009_at_uottawa.ca
• Naouar Yaagoubi NYAAG070_at_uottawa.ca (devoirs en
  Français)

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Why this course? (1) Pourquoi ce cours?

• Computing and electrical engineering have a
  tremendous positive impact we want to enhance
• Informatique et de génie électrique ont un impact
  extrêmement positif que nous voulons améliorer
• E.g.
• Allowing us to communicate and access information
  in ways we never imagined / Ils nous permettent
  de communiquer et d'accéder à l'information de
  façon que nous n'avons jamais imaginé
• Giving us entertainment and fun / Ils nous
  donnent divertissement et de plaisir
• Stimulating the economy with business
  opportunities / Ils stimulent l'économie avec des
  activités commerciales

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Why this course? (2) Pourquoi ce cours?

• Positive / Positif
• Generating medical breakthroughs by analysing the
  genome and proteome / Ils génèrent des des
  découvertes médicales en analysant le génome et
  du protéome
• Creating and distributing the energy civilization
  needs / Ils créent et distribuent l'énergie
  nécessaire à civilisation
• Making us all more productive and comfortable at
  work and play / Ils nous font tous plus
  productifs et à l'aise quand nous travaillons et
  jouons
• Automating uninteresting, repetitive tasks / Ils
  automatisent les tâches qui sont sans intérêt ou
  répétitif

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Why this course? (3) Pourquoi ce cours?

• But, technology can have a tremendous negative
  impact we want to avoid / Mais, la technologie
  peut avoir un impact négatif énorme que nous
  voulons éviter
• Disasters and other societal problems can be
  caused by / Les catastrophes et d'autres
  problèmes de société peut être causée par
• Critical incidents where technology was at fault
  / Les incidents critiques où la technologie était
  en faute
• Planes, trains, spaceships and automobiles
  crashing / Accidents d'avions, les trains, les
  vaisseaux spatiaux et les voitures
• Overdosing patients / surdosage des patients
• Failures of financial systems / Défaillances des
  systèmes financiers

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Why this course? (4) Pourquoi ce cours?

• Negative / Negatif
• Management failures / Échecs majeurs de gestion
• Huge cost over-runs from poorly run projects /
  Énormes dépassements de coûts des projets mal
  gérés
• Privacy breaches / violations de la
  confidentialité
• The actions of hackers and other criminals / Les
  actions des pirates et autres criminels
• Etc.

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The solution Professionalism /La solution le
professionnalisme

• Taking responsibility for our work / Assumer la
  responsabilité pour le travail que nous faisons
• Pride in quality work / La fierté de la qualité
  du travail
• Acting ethically to clients, colleagues,
  management, society and the environment / Agir de
  façon éthique pour les clients, les collègues, la
  direction, la société et l'environnement

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Professionalism(e) (2)

• Ensuring we are
• properly educated
• know a little of the history of our field
• have depth of understanding
• apply best practices
• S'assurer que
• nous sommes bien renseignés
• nous connaissons un peu de l'histoire de notre
  domaine,
• nous avons profondeur de compréhension
• nous appliquons les meilleures pratiques

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Professionalism(e) (3)

• Understanding risks, preventing failures /
  Comprendre les risques et la prévention des
  échecs
• Continual improvement of ourselves, our
  profession and our technology / L'amélioration
  continue de nous-mêmes, notre profession et notre
  technologie

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Disciplines in EECS (1)

• Electrical engineers / Les ingénieurs électriques
• Since 1800s
• Design power, electronics, communication, control
  systems, instrumentation and devices
• Computer scientists / Les informaticiens
• Since 1940s
• Develop software, data structures, algorithms,
  hardware and scientific underpinnngs of computing

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Disciplines in EECS (2)

• Computer engineers / Les ingénieurs
  informaticiens
• Offshoot of EE and CS in 1970s
• Design hardware and hardware-software systems
• Software engineers / Les ingénieurs logiciels
• Offshoot of computer science in 1980s
• Apply engineering methods to large scale software

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Background questions /Questions générales

• Answer with Top Hat Monocle
• What program are you in? / Dans quel programme
  êtes-vous inscrit?
• How well do you understand English? / Comment
  comprenez-vous langlais?
• How well do you understand French? / Comment
  comprenez-vous le français?

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Historical perspective Antiquity

• Science
• Geometry, Algebra, Philosophy,
• Production of goods and services
• Artisans, Guilds
• Engineering
• Military Engineering
• Early civil engineering Heating systems,
  viaducts

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Historical perspective 17th - 18th Century

• Science
• Calculus, Logic, Chemistry, Physics
• Production of goods and services
• Still largely artisans and guilds
• Engineering
• Civil and Mechanical engineering

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Historical perspective 19th Century

• Science
• Rapid advances in all areas. Biology develops
• Production of goods and services
• Industrial revolution railroads for distribution
• Engineering
• Many core principles developed
• Ability to draw up specifications based on an
  understanding of the science and engineering
  principles
• Automobiles, telegraph, telephone, electricity,
  control
• Mechanical computing Punched cards at IBM

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Early 20th Century

• Early concepts underlying computer science
• Information theory, concepts of computability
• Mass production
• World wars Horror, but impetus for innovation
• Key disasters See coming slides
• Quebec bridge Engineering in Canada
• New London School Explosion Engineering in the
  US

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Quebec Bridge Disaster Aug 29, 1907

• Quebec Bridge is (still) the longest cantilevered
  span in the world 550m
• Le pont de Quebec est le plus long en porte-
  a-faux au monde 550,
• Collapsed during construction in 1907
• Lepont sest effondré pendant sa construction en
  1907
• 75 workers killed / 75 morts

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Quebec Bridge Disaster - 2

• Bedrock location determined span length
• Theodore Cooper (New York) hired as consulting
  engineer.
• Responsible for design and guaranteeing bridge
  strength
• Beams, columns, shipped from Pennsylvania
• Two halves built from each shore to meet in the
  middle

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Quebec Bridge Disaster - 3

• As south side reached 200m, some compression
  members started bending
• Serious Site engineer McLure
• Construction suspended
• Exchange of telegrams with Cooper for 3 weeks
• McLure then travels to New York
• Cooper convinced
• Add no more load till after due consideration

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Quebec Bridge Disaster - 4

• Chief site engineer Hoare mistakenly resumed work
• Collapse
• Royal commission findings
• Serious errors in design
• Actual stresses above safe limits
• Consulting engineer Cooper rarely visited
• Chief site engineer Hoare not technically
  competent to supervise
• Communication problems

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Quebec Bridge Disaster - 5

• A realization developed that only competent,
  ethical people should practice engineering
• Professional engineering licensing introduced
• Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer (iron
  ring) instituted
• Another collapse in 1916 when hoisting new middle
  section into place kills 13
• Bridge finally completed in 1917
• Still in use, although a modern autoroute bridge
  is now next to it

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Quebec and Pierre Laporte bridges today
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New London School Explosion March 1937

• Gas explosion due to faulty engineering killed
  over 295 students and teachers
• Prompted Texas and other states to require
  engineering licensure

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Some professions requiring a license

• Engineering / Génie
• Because most designs (buildings, airplanes,
  power systems) can cause harm if they fail.
• But not everybody has a license!
• Medicine, nursing, dentistry etc. / Médecine,
  sciences infirmières, dentisterie, etc
• Malpractice can kill
• Teaching / enseignement
• Children are vulnerable
• Geoscience /géosciences Chartered
  Accounting/comptabilité
• Fake or wrong results can cause great financial
  harm

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Trades requiring a license

• Plumbing
• Electrician
• Hairdressing
• A trade does not require a university degree

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Professions not requiring a license (yet)

• Most sciences
• Peer review is used for quality control
• University teaching (except of some licensed
  professions)
• Computer programming
• The field grew too large before anybody thought
  about this
• A lot of software is not safety critical

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Question for discussion / à discuter

• Should some computer science practice also be
  subject to a license (restricted practice?) just
  like engineering
• Est-ce que certaines pratiques de l'informatique
  devraient également être soumis à une licence
  (exercice restreint?)

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A Few Key People in Electrical Engineering

• Volta, Ampere, Ohm, Faraday, Maxwell Key
  electrical scientists that developed core
  concepts
• Joseph Fourier Fourier Transform
• Samuel Morse, Charles Bright Telegraphy
• Edison, Bell, Tesla, Westinghouse, Marconi Key
  innovators in power, telephony and radio
• Claude Shannon Information theory
• Charles Jenkins, Philo Farnsworth, John Baird TV
• Darlington, Shockley Transistors
• Jack Kilby, Robert Noyce Integrated circuits

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A Few Key People in Computer Science

• Boole Boolean logic
• Blaise Pascal, Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace
  mechanical calculating devices
• Alan Turing, John Von Neumann, Church key
  concepts of algorithms and computing
• Grace Hopper Compilers
• Vanevar Bush, Tim Berners-Lee Hypertext, WWW
• Edsger Dijkstra, CAR Hoare Algorithms
• Alan Kay, Adele Goldberg, Bjarne Stroustrup
  Object orientation
• Donald Knuth The Art of Computer Programming
• Marvin Minsky, Herbert Simon Artificial
  Intelligence
• Niklaus Wirth, John McCarthy Programming
  languages
• Bill Joy, Linus Torvalds Unix/Linux
• Bill Gates, Steve Jobs Corporate innovators

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Key companies

• Consolidated Edison
• General Electric
• Westinghouse
• IBM
• ATT
• Xerox
• Digital Equipment Corporation / Compaq / HP
• Sperry / Unisys
• Northern Electric -gt Northern Telecom -gt Nortel
• Microsoft
• Apple
• Google

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Key institutions

• AIEE IRE IEEE 129 years of history
• IEE -gt IET Electrical Engineering in Britain
• ACM Association for Computing Machinery
• CIPS Canadian Information Processing Society

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Rapid Pace of Change

• 1940s The first computer is built
• 1956 First hard-disk drive weighed a ton and
  stored five megabytes
• 1964 Attempts at having a computer act like a
  human
• Eliza http//www.manifestation.com/neurotoys/eliza
  .php3
• 1991 Space shuttle had a one-megahertz computer
• Today Pocket devices hold a terabyte (230 109
  bytes) of data
• Today Automobiles have many 1GHz computers

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Recent and upcoming developments Electronics and
power systems

• Spintronics harnessing electron spin
• Memristors Low power consumption devices
  (memory resistors)
• When current flows in one direction, resistance
  increases
• When current flows in the other direction
  resistance decreases.
• Ubiquitous photovoltaics
• Smart grid

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Recent and Upcoming DevelopmentsConverged
pocket devices

• Until recently you might need to carry
  separately
• Cell phone, GPS, calculator, iPod, dictionary,
  game console, first aid manual, camera, video
  camera, carpenters level, book
• Now these and much, much more are all in one
  device
• Other upcoming technologies for cell phones
• TV, environmental sensor, TV remote, satellite
  radio, credit/debit card substitute, garage door
  opener, language interpreter, integration with
  cordless phones (like Femtocells), microscope,
  telescope, facial recognition
• But
• Using these devices while driving is a problem
• They can interfere with solitude, quiet and
  concentration
• Cameras in cell phones present privacy issues

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Recent and Upcoming DevelopmentsArtificial
Intelligence and Robotics

• Artificial intelligence can solve a number of
  expert, difficult tasks
• Machine translation is becoming closer to reality
• Robotic devices are often special-purpose
  devices, and may require AI to function
• Can operate in space, in hazardous situations, or
  perform routine physically laborious tasks
• Machine Learning and Data Mining methods or
  algorithms enable adaptive systems
• Can help us understand patterns in data, e.g. for
  weather and business forecasting, detecting
  security violations etc.

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Recent and Upcoming Developments Assisting the
disabled

• Restoration of abilities, productivity and
  independence
• Screen readers and scanners for the blind
• Speech recognition for the deaf
• Prosthetics with motion sensors

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What other innovation is coming?

• Encrypted medical records on chips attached to
  medical bracelets or on your cell phone
• Biology, electrical engineering and computer
  sciences will combine new ways to insert devices
  into the body
• Communicate directly with the brain
• Control the world by thought
• Monitor health constantly

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Discussion Questions

• What changes and new developments do you expect
  in the next 50 years?
• Top Hat Monocle In 2-3 words name the technology
  you are most looking forward to / En 2-3 mots
  nommer la technologie à laquelle vous êtes le
  plus d'impatience
• How will life be different than it is today?

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But what problems do we need to deal with?

• Criminals, terrorists and hostile governments
  also have the power of computing at their
  disposal
• Combating these requires restrictions and
  inconveniences
• Personal data can leak out, reducing privacy
• Some people become less social due to interacting
  more and more with technology
• Fire was a gift when our ancestors discovered it
  but it has also caused a lot of destruction