Book Review: Professional Practice in Engineering and Computing: Preparing for Future Careers by Riadh Habash

Unreadable. Full of grammatical errors and run on sentences. Just incredibly difficult to read. There may be some useful information in here, but I'll be damned if I can find it. Seriously needs to be edited down by someone with a strong grasp of the English language.

Here's a typical sentence:

"One of the key workplace trends of the future would be the downfall of the corporate ladder, dating back to the Industrial Revolution when thriving businesses were developed on a strict order."

I consider myself to be well educated, and I read a lot of books. But I struggle to understand what that sentence is trying to say. Does the trend date back to the Industrial Revolution? If this is a future trend, should the word "will" be used instead of "would"? Are businesses developed "on" a strict order, or "in" a strict order? Are these trends "in" the future rather than belonging to the future? What even is a corporate ladder and how does it relate to business development?

The book makes several illogical leaps. Here's a random example:

"The industrial world was about reducing choices; however, the pre-digital world is about expanding choices."

What does that even mean? How did industrialisation reduce choice? Are we now in the pre-digital world? What choices have been expanded?

Here's another choice quote:

"AI will change the future of work through automation by the use of technology to complete tasks and augmentation by the use of technology to assist in completing tasks."

I think that's trying to say "Artificial Intelligence will change the future of work by automating and augmenting the way workers complete tasks." But I could be wrong. The book is full of such gibberish.

Fancy some word salad?

"A design process is usually structured as a series of design phases (defined by milestones), as shown in Figure 6.8. The concept of design sessions should be introduced within each phase of the design to help designers improve the design process and its flow performance with regular reflection on segments of the design process. A designer, when ​designing, is inside a design process and is not always in the position to consider the process critically and logically."

WTAF? Did he get paid extra for each time the word "design" was used?

It also contains this incredibly illuminating, and thoroughly professional diagram.

If I handed something like this in for GCSE, I'd fail.

If you've been told to buy this book for an MSc course - complain. Ask your tutor to explain what they thought of the book and if they understand what it is talking about.

And the cost? £140 for the hardback, and a mere £126 for the eBook!

You know how reviewers often say "I wish I could award this Zero Stars"? Well, I hacked my blog's theme specifically so I could do that!

"Nul Points!"