Reddit and What I Found There

Reddit, a land of almost anything you can imagine including the worst parts too. Today, we look for a professional side of the site, specifically one that discusses my future field of electrical and computer engineering.

Lenaerts, Daan "Arduino Electronics" 1/7/16 via pixabay. Public Domain License

1. What kinds of things do people in the Reddit forums seem to be arguing about, debating, disagreeing about or otherwise engaging in meaningful exchanges of ideas about? 

Within the Reddit ECE forums, it quickly became apparent that most of the individuals active on the /r/ECE subreddit were students such as myself, often asking questions about different problems or projects that they were working on. However, a number of practicing engineers are also active on the subreddit, sharing their knowledge with the students or debating over various controversies within the broad engineering discipline or specifically about electrical engineering.

2. In your opinion, what are the two most interesting debates/disagreements you found in the Reddit forums? 

One interesting debate that I was able to find was about Trump's claims about the iPhone, when he claimed that if elected, he would attempt to bring back Apple's production lines to the United States. Various engineers were attempting to explain how bringing production back may sound like a good idea, but would actually be a larger detriment to the company than keeping it in China. As a future engineer, I know that these are the type of decisions I'll likely be involved in as we try to maximize profits to keep investors happy.

Another discussion that I found was from a student, asking about the ethics of GPA calculation, where users debated the best way to show a GPA in the best possible way to improve the chances of getting a job. Various users debated with each other as to the best way to show this, but the most popular suggestion was to just stick with your GPA, no matter what it ended up being. I know that I'll probably have these same thoughts as I look for a job in the future, so it was interesting to see so many different perspectives on the matter.


3. Overall, what impression do you get of your discipline based on what you saw happening in the Reddit forums? 

While looking through the Reddit forums, I was very surprised to see just how many students were active in the subreddit. While I know that the younger generations are often the ones using sites like Reddit, I would have expected a more active professional community, though they still exist within the subreddit. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that most individuals were acting very respectfully towards each other, something not often found while browsing Reddit. Needless to say, I'll definitely be subscribing to ECE now.