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Scientists: Focus on developing new theories, solutions to abstract problems, etc.
Engineers: Build tools based on the theories created by the scientists.
Developers: Build products based on the tools the engineers made.
Really? I find it the most interesting. Which is, I think, what led me here.
"It helps to know some music theory if you write and perform music, but a lot of very successful songwriters and performers get by very happily with just enough music theory." This is an absolutely bogus comparison. Music does not need to be maintained, music does not need to be troubleshooted or debugged (and thus, reasoned about), music does not solve a problem(1). Music is an artistic expression, while computer so…
This is an absolutely bogus comparison
I disagree. There are very successful songwriters and performers who have no training, but almost all of the good songwriters and performers did have (usually classical) musical training.
The same is absolutely true in software: There's a lot of very popular crap out there, but the software which is universally recognized as good -- code like TeX -- almost always comes from authors with solid computer science training.
Writing applications: go ahead, program by the seat of your pants. Architect a solution to a big problem: theory comes in very handy.
The theories behind computer science have little very application in large software engineering. software engineering != computer science
Computer science is a lot more than proofs.
"Of all the mathematical sciences, computer science is unquestionably the dullest." Really? I find it the most interesting. Which is, I think, what led me here.
I keeping seeing all these cs vs programming articles. I'm really waiting for a "fuck just programming, cs is fucking awesome" one, because all the ones I've read so far sound like "haha, stupid math nerds and their cs. just learn to program" (a bit of mis-characterization of this article, maybe, but I get annoyed when people say something I like is "unquestionably" dull)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The theories behind computer science have little very application in large software engineering. software engineering != computer science
That's preposterous. Computer science is directly applicable to understanding issues of scalability, searching, hashing, database properties, network routes and looping, the list goes on and on. Computer science is a lot more than proofs.
When you're writing a multi-million dollar piece of software (20+ man-years), the technical problems are the easy ones to solve. Actually putting the thing together is the hard part.
"Of all the mathematical sciences, computer science is unquestionably the dullest." Really? I find it the most interesting. Which is, I think, what led me here.
I like to think of it like this: Scientists: Focus on developing new theories, solutions to abstract problems, etc. Engineers: Build tools based on the theories created by the scientists. Developers: Build products based on the tools the engineers made.
Engineers: study how to build. This may include original theorizing pertaining to methods of building -- they don't just ape scientists' theories, they create their own. Engineering is itself the science of building.
Developers: Engineer vs. developer is an arbitrary division. In truth there is a continuum from the most scientific of engineers, who use abstract theorizing to create new technologies, down to someone comparable to the person who installs your water heater.