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Advanced Computer Science Courses

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Re: Advanced Computer Science Courses

#51
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did look closely at this list. I commented because it's such a typical example of unearned upvote candy. I could have assembled this list (as a non-computer scientist) in less than an hour just by looking at the usual places I look for lecture notes and following the typical linkbait-maker advice of leaving a brief comment and headings. The author admits s/he is still working through the material and the details on…

Ok, I should have renamed it from the original title given by the author to "Excellent List of Distributed Systems and Relevant CS Courses With Good Lecture Notes, Assembled by a University of Cambridge PhD in Mobile Distributed Systems, Zookeeper Committer and a Glorious Systems Engineer Who Lives and Breathes Distributed Systems at Cloudera" to get less upvotes. Just read the rest of his blog. This is not a trivial…

helwr, I respect the fact that you're intelligently and politely continuing this debate. Maybe it is not worth your time because of my cynical attitude.

I have very little respect for Quora, HN, retweets, or bookmarks which are accomplished with a click. If it makes you feel better, something I wrote also reached the front page of HN and received an undue number of upvotes, retweets, and social bookmarks by people who I guarantee have not read even 1% of the works I pointed to -- all because the blog post followed the linkbait formula.

I Truly Believe that people bookmark/upvote/retweet things they "intend to read" but never actually read, and that this systematically increases the level of noise masquerading as signal on the web.

Having stated that background - some of the response you got on Quora looks fine; the intelligent professors retweet just as sheeply as everyone else since the private cost is $0; and bookmarks signify nothing more than that this story reached the front page of HN.

Cheers, thank you for the rational back-and-forth.

Re: Advanced Computer Science Courses

#52
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I should have renamed it from the original title given by the author to "Excellent List of Distributed Systems and Relevant CS Courses With Good Lecture Notes, Assembled by a University of Cambridge PhD in Mobile Distributed Systems, Zookeeper Committer and a Glorious Systems Engineer Who Lives and Breathes Distributed Systems at Cloudera" to get less upvotes. Just read the rest of his blog. This is not a trivial…

helwr, I respect the fact that you're intelligently and politely continuing this debate. Maybe it is not worth your time because of my cynical attitude. I have very little respect for Quora, HN, retweets, or bookmarks which are accomplished with a click. If it makes you feel better, something I wrote also reached the front page of HN and received an undue number of upvotes, retweets, and social bookmarks by people wh…

Cheers

Re: Advanced Computer Science Courses

#53
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I should have renamed it from the original title given by the author to "Excellent List of Distributed Systems and Relevant CS Courses With Good Lecture Notes, Assembled by a University of Cambridge PhD in Mobile Distributed Systems, Zookeeper Committer and a Glorious Systems Engineer Who Lives and Breathes Distributed Systems at Cloudera" to get less upvotes. Just read the rest of his blog. This is not a trivial…

helwr, I respect the fact that you're intelligently and politely continuing this debate. Maybe it is not worth your time because of my cynical attitude. I have very little respect for Quora, HN, retweets, or bookmarks which are accomplished with a click. If it makes you feel better, something I wrote also reached the front page of HN and received an undue number of upvotes, retweets, and social bookmarks by people wh…

[deleted]

Re: Advanced Computer Science Courses

#54
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

helwr, I respect the fact that you're intelligently and politely continuing this debate. Maybe it is not worth your time because of my cynical attitude. I have very little respect for Quora, HN, retweets, or bookmarks which are accomplished with a click. If it makes you feel better, something I wrote also reached the front page of HN and received an undue number of upvotes, retweets, and social bookmarks by people wh…

Cheers

[deleted]

Re: Advanced Computer Science Courses

#55
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really agree. There are a number of things that "computer science" can be: - The study of algorithms. Mathy. - Numerical analysis. Mathy. - Compilers, computational reasoning, automated proofs. Mathy. - Data mining and AI. Mathy. - Systems, especially performance testing. Needs some statistics, but it's not hardcore math. No more than psychology or economics. - Systems architecture. Not at all mathy. More lik…

"the study of algorithms" Well, can do what Knuth did in TACP. There he did a lot with combinatorial formulas. To make much more progress, will have to get serious about math. E.g., the leading question in algorithms is just P versus NP, and that is now darned serious math. Don't attack that or even parts of it without a good background in math. Other new and challenging questions in algorithms promise to need math f…

I feel like you may be ignoring special functions, although you did mention NP completeness. The un-mathematized areas of CS make liberal use of intuitive formulations of feedback systems, and are more or less unassailable to analysis. Computer Engineering can tackle some of these, but there is a lot of pressure to swap these intuitively good solutions to worse, but more tractable ones.

CS can and has the taken head-on a large number of problems mathematics cannot handle. These are hard to sciencify, which is why the prominent direction of CS seems to instead be expressiveness. You can't take engineering out of computing, and CS seems to be yet another attempt at systems study.

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