Blockchain, though no one on hn really understands it. :D
Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?
11–20 of 183 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?
#12Process Mining [1]. When I programmed a rather complex logistics simulator at work I told my coworkers 'whoever comes up with a way of instantiating a simulator from data will be praised forever'. Turned out process discovery is a thing (well, one of _the_ things in PM). And there's so much cool stuff to do and being done. I'm now on the last stretch of my doctorate researching the mining of typical plans in non-competitive environments.
Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?
#13Low power sensor and associated networks.
Its hard to do and has lots of real world applications.
Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?
#14I think most interesting computer science fields are actually application of CS in other domains.
Science changed a lot in the last decades, moving from a genius in a room looking at the data and coming up with grand theory to have vast amounts of data that no single human can make sense of. The work of the computer scientist is to quickly understand problems from various fields then solve it using tailor-made algorithm that leverage the prior knowledge, the data structure.
One of such interesting fields (which I'm working on), is computational biology. We're working on leveraging sparse experimental data for protein structure prediction. To do that, we end up using algorithms and ideas from different various CS fields, from machine learning, to robotics, to distributed systems. Other people are working on exciting fields like computation protein design, studying drug protein interaction in silico..
Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?
#15Since you mentioned movements in free software, "open core" has been emerging in the last 4 years as a viable way to do business while allowing other individuals and companies to build onto your core platform while still being able to monetize your work. For example, if you launch a startup specializing in building foo, you can maintain a library called libfoo and sell a larger foo application or foo plugins or foo services using the open-source library you created.
Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?
#16Homomorphic encryption is a mind-blower. But I fear that we may never see it in it's fullest glory. It's going to be computationally too expensive or too impractical for reason or another. One can still hope.
Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?
#17Various field of Deep Learning.
Right now - Reinforcement Learning.
See: https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2018/01/12/10-cha... or in general any other marker like NIPS submissions or arXiv preprints on DL.
Of course focus changes, and maybe in the next 2 years it will be on something different than RL. But still, even in Computer Vision it is still a very vibrant field, since its breakthrough in late 2012 (https://www.eff.org/ai/metrics). The majority of more traditional disciplines of CS had their breakthroughs a few decades ago.
Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?
#18AI, machine learning, and neural networks are, of courwe, booming, but I consider them to be hyped. I consider type theory and formal verification to be more promising (but more academic). Distributed systems and everything having to do with parallel and/or high-performance systems is a good midway between what the industry likes and what's interesting from an academic point of view.
Funny, distributed systems supervisors often warn their students that there is a huge disconnect between theory and practice and if they really want to be in the field.
Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?
#19Almost all of the answers on this list are not fields that are "emerging" but fields that "have already emerged".
The ideal emerging field is one that's so obscure we haven't heard of it yet, but so important that we will. If there are widely disseminated books on Amazon about your field, it's not emerging. If there are hundreds of professionals cranking out papers about your field, it's also not emerging.
Emerging fields are underrated and under-recognized. What are they?
Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?
#20Zero knowledge proofs.
Secure execution environments.