Engineering or reverse engineering??

Question

What is harder to engineer something or to reverse engineer something??Pls explain them in context

Answer 1

If you reverse engineer something you may not know how everything works.  Like if you tried to reverse engineer Yahoo Answers, how does the answers link up to the questions and how does the web interface link up to both of them?

If you're the engineer of Yahoo Answers, you would how it works cause you created it.  But it takes a lot longer to create something from scratch than to change bits of something already in existence.

How much stuff do you want to change after reverse engineering?  If a lot then you'd probably wish you were the engineer.

Answer 2

Engineering something is more difficult.  Reverse engineering means taking something that has already been made ("engineered"), taking it apart and figuring out how it was made so that you can build a copy or improve upon the product.  Engineering something means you're starting from scratch to make something novel.

Answer 3

Reverse engineering is comparable to taking a test in school by copying the answers off the kid sitting next to you.  It does not need creativity as real engineering does and leaves you open for patent infringement lawsuits if you copied something that is protected by a patent.