Principles of Design and Programming

The course Principles of Design and Programming was introduced in 2023 and fulfills a long-standing ambition of the department to provide first-year Mechanical Engineering students with an early introduction to key skills in both design and programming. The course aims to build a solid foundation for students as they begin their academic and professional journeys.

The course is divided into two parts. The design principles section, taught by Paul Vrancken, introduces students to the general design process, covering concept development, validation, stiffness and weight optimization, control of degrees of freedom, and fundamental aspects of detailing, technical drawing, and manufacturing methods. Through this, students learn how to approach engineering design challenges systematically and creatively.

I am responsible for the programming part of the course, which emphasizes good programming style and practices rather than focusing on a specific language. While the course material is taught using Python and MATLAB, the main goal is to develop a strong understanding of core programming concepts.

Topics covered include the evolution of programming languages, components of a programming language, abstraction of data and functionality, clean coding practices, version management with Git, and the use of libraries for plotting and linear algebra. Students also learn about code design and maintenance to ensure they can write robust and adaptable programs.

The course concludes with a written exam and a practical programming assignment. In the 2024–2025 edition, students were tasked with developing a program to read astronomical data and simulate the orbit of the Moon around the Earth using Newton’s laws of gravity, ultimately predicting the mass of the Earth. This assignment encourages students to apply their knowledge to a real-world inspired challenge, integrating physics, data analysis, and coding.