Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Computer science is not about computers”

quoteinvestigator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 293 posts

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#181

Post by TuringTest »

bregma wrote: post #172
TuringTest wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Efficiency is not important at all when you talk about a mathematical proof. Precisely, and that's the main difference between computer science and the rest of mathematics. Typically CS cares about the process to find a result, and not just its value nor the possibility or impossibility to find it.

> Typically CS cares about the process to find a result, and not just its value nor the possibility or impossibility to find it. Typically, programmers care about the process to find the result. Some programmers are computer scientists. You can not conclude that all computer scientists are programmers, so your statement is based on logical fallacy.

Computer science still has computational complexity theory and analysis of algorithms as sub-fields, with complexity classes and Big O notation. These very much care about the process to find results, which was the basis for my statement :-) The fallacy is on your interpretation of what I said.

There are results in theoretical computer science that don't care about the efficiency in the process; the most essential are the computability theorems exploring what parts of mathematics can be computed, and what we mean by computation anyway.

But the most essential part -the halting problem- was resolved long ago, so the lion's share of applications of computing science is in finding practical ways to use computers, which again needs to take efficiency into account.

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#182

Post by stormking »

felixfbecker wrote: post #142
stormking wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany, anything computer-related is subsumed under "Informatik". - Students learning to use MS Office in school? Informatik. - People fixing printers and replacing your harddrive? Informatik. - System administrators managing a datacenter? Informatik. - Data scientist applying deep learning techiques? Informatik. - University professor trying to prove P==NP? Informatik. Honestly, I envy the Americans for their de…

It depends on the context. A university degree in Informatik will obviously not be about using MS Office. But 7th grade Informatik is. 10th grade Informatik introduced programming at my school. A trained job “Fachinformatiker für Systemadministration” will be about sysadmin work.

To 90% of the population, it's not "obvious" or we would not need T-Shirts labeled "I will not fix your computer for you".

Even a common programmer does not use any actual "computer science" 99% of the time and your typical sysadmin type probably never knew any. So it's simply wrong and confusing to use the same word for it.

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#183

Post by lioeters »

mxscho wrote: post #29

In Europe, "Computer Science" is translated with a word that is a mix of "information" and "mathematics". University course names are: > [...] informatique (French), Informatik (German), informatica (Italian, Dutch), informática (Spanish, Portuguese), informatika (Slavic languages and Hungarian) or pliroforiki (πληροφορική, which means informatics) in Greek. Similar words have also been adopted in the UK (as in the S…

In Japanese, "computer science" is directly translated as 計算機科学, which basically means "calculator science" - but the phrase is unusual, very rarely used.

Instead, more commonly seen are 情報工学 ("information engineering") or 情報科学 ("information science") - which is equivalent in meaning to "informatics".

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#184

Post by [deleted] »

TuringTest wrote: post #148
kaba0 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you think that? I believe I’ve read that even Church himself said that Turing machines are a more elegant basis for computations, since they are much easier to mathematically reason about. I’m sure one can prove everything proved for Turing machines for lambda calculus, but I disagree with your statement that it is more mathematically grounded. It may be true in a syntactic form, but definitely not in a mat…

Turing machines are terribly inefficient, though. They may be easier to reason about than lambda calculus, but not good for practical computing purposes. Their value was in proving that logical and mathematical reasoning could be mechanized with an automatic device, something that had not been clear until then. Computing science cares a lot about building efficient processes. Thus to create real working programs, a b…

[deleted]

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#185

Post by TuringTest »

fnrslvr wrote: post #168
TuringTest wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turing machines are terribly inefficient, though. They may be easier to reason about than lambda calculus, but not good for practical computing purposes. Their value was in proving that logical and mathematical reasoning could be mechanized with an automatic device, something that had not been clear until then. Computing science cares a lot about building efficient processes. Thus to create real working programs, a b…

This whole debate is always so bewildering. Programming paradigm fanboys get into heated arguments about which model is the "best" one, but actual computer science research uses myriad different models of computation, usually endeavoring to select the one that is most convenient for the given purpose. Sometimes that could mean using the lambda calculus, particularly in study of language theory and type systems. Other…

Well, computing science studies programming paradigms; so defining them and analyzing what makes them suitable for what purposes is pretty much within its scope.

As I said above, it may very well be that the best usage for Turing machines is using them in mathematical proofs; where the efficiency of the computation is not a concern.

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#187

Post by TuringTest »

Jenz wrote: post #175
bregma wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see nothing odd in calling that computer science. It seems more like hardcore computer science.

And what then couldn’t be called "hardcore computer science?"

I believe the core difference between comp-sci and other math is in taking into account the efficiency of the representation and/or transformation.

Thus defining the Monster group is discrete mathematics, but not computer science (or not directly). Finding parts of the Monster groups that can be represented and manipulated by computers would be computer science.

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#188

Post by lmilcin »

Computer Science is to software development like theoretical mathematics is to economics.

Sure, there are some formulas in economics, but 99.99% of the time you are not going to prove anything mathematically and you are just looking up a formula written by somebody else. On the other hand economics has a huge amount of stuff that is not covered by mathematics at all.

It is disheartening to see so many people wasting so much of their potential by studying CS when they know they will get into software development anyway. Rather than racking education costs they could be earning money and gaining experience.

I have been constantly hiring for the past 15 years and I have learned to stop caring about CS. Real world experience is worth more than comparable time spent studying CS.

The only reason I may prefer a candidate with a degree is because it takes a lot of work and perseverance to stick to the goal of earning the degree, but I almost don't care what kind of technical degree you have earned.

One more point, it is not like academia is the only place where you can learn CS! In some areas of knowledge and at bleeding edge of it you may need access to people, but basic CS knowledge that can ever be even potentially useful at development work is all well documented in a huge selection of very good books.

You can pick them up and learn.

Good developers treat learning as part of their work, and it doesn't matter if something was not taught at school -- if they notice they are missing some knowledge they will just learn it.

If you need to study something I think it is better to study something orthogonal to what you are going to be doing. This can help create unique profile for you as a developer.

For example I have studied theoretical math and over the years I came to conclusion that was much better choice than going to CS. I have learned logical thinking and dealing with complex abstract problems. I have learned most of the CS stuff anyway while doing my work but I would probably never learn most of what I learned in math.

Other good directions of studies would be philosophy, visual arts, management, accounting -- you see the picture. Any of these could provide you with an edge as a developer for particular set of problems.

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#189

Post by lifthrasiir »

lioeters wrote: post #183
mxscho wrote: post #29

In Europe, "Computer Science" is translated with a word that is a mix of "information" and "mathematics". University course names are: > [...] informatique (French), Informatik (German), informatica (Italian, Dutch), informática (Spanish, Portuguese), informatika (Slavic languages and Hungarian) or pliroforiki (πληροφορική, which means informatics) in Greek. Similar words have also been adopted in the UK (as in the S…

In Japanese, "computer science" is directly translated as 計算機科学, which basically means "calculator science" - but the phrase is unusual, very rarely used. Instead, more commonly seen are 情報工学 ("information engineering") or 情報科学 ("information science") - which is equivalent in meaning to "informatics".

There are at least four more-or-less equivalent Korean terms in common use. "컴퓨터 과학" (lit. computer science) and "컴퓨터 공학" (lit. computer engineering) is the most popular and frequently seen in universities. "전산학" (lit. [electronic] computing science) is less common but preferred by several prominent universities [1]. "정보과학" (lit. information science) is substantially unpopular than both but can be seen for example in several academic institutes like 한국정보과학회 (the Korean Institute of Information Scientists and Engineers).

[1] There was even a significant attempt in 2000 to change the name of KAIST [2] CS department from "전산학" to "컴퓨터 과학" or similar. The attempt was unsuccessful and to this day its name remains "전산학(부)". Prof. Kwanggeun Yi has written a public letter [3] against the change.

[2] https://www.kaist.ac.kr/en/

[3] http://ropas.snu.ac.kr/~kwang/memo/name.html

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#190

Post by incognito_limey »

lmilcin wrote: post #188

Computer Science is to software development like theoretical mathematics is to economics. Sure, there are some formulas in economics, but 99.99% of the time you are not going to prove anything mathematically and you are just looking up a formula written by somebody else. On the other hand economics has a huge amount of stuff that is not covered by mathematics at all. It is disheartening to see so many people wasting…

This also reflects how broken hiring is in tech. Leetcode and algorithm memorisation has very little to do with being a "good" developer. Can you communicate your ideas well? Can you understand and follow up when requirements are not clear? Are you able to work with others well? This last point in particular is where I find a lot of candidates fall down. They maybe able to invert a binary tree, but if they have to have an actual conversation with say an end user to help resolve/understand a problem, many of them can't.
Post reply on HN