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Let's Not Call It "Computer Science" If We Really Mean "Computer Programming"

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Re: Let's Not Call It "Computer Science" If We Really Mean "Computer Programming"

#171

Post by strictfp »

dxbydt wrote: post #169
strictfp wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a preacher of Agile. I talk about it in order to get things done. Theoretical work is important, but let's face it, most customers want products, not research. Your average person declaring himself 'theoretically oriented' is no good in delivering products. He hasn't understood the bigger goal and will just waste the clients time and money training himself to write better algos. Most likely he will be rather unex…

> most customers want products, not research "I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these m…

Well I for one want to make great products that make me feel like we surpassed ourselves and makes the customers happy. Most likely this involves technical innovation. I'm sick and tired of the ones writing "better" hash tables all day, blowing by budget and pissing everone off who actually wants to accomplish something.

Fun for me means keeping the project on track, delivering so that we get an income and can spend real money on R&D and events. I don't want to sit in a project which hasn't delivered in months, is in overtime (with all rhe stress that that means) and no working program what so ever, just a bunch of Impls, Contexts, BidiMaps and XxxUtils. That's not cs, and it sure as hl ain't fun!

Re: Let's Not Call It "Computer Science" If We Really Mean "Computer Programming"

#172

Post by jsprinkles »

snikolov wrote: post #168
jsprinkles wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an example, take Google's self-driving cars. Would you say the meat of their body of work theoretical? No.

Would you care to elaborate? Surely most of the lines of code are not directly implementing theoretical things, but I would say the meat of the work is without a doubt theoretical.

Theory is thinking about how to build a self-driving car, and the algorithms and considerations that would be required to do so, and perhaps writing a paper about how best to go about doing it. Practical is writing code, running wire, and testing the car. Surely they've done both, but now that the car exists they're into the practical territory. As they adventure through the practical part, surely new theoreticals are discovered and published.

Just because nobody has built a self-driving car before does not automatically make actually building one a theoretical exercise. The process is applying the sciences to making a car do something, which is very practical. Your awesome sort algorithm and the paper explaining it is theoretical. My implementation of it is practical.

That is the differentiation that most people can't see.

Re: Let's Not Call It "Computer Science" If We Really Mean "Computer Programming"

#173

Post by jsprinkles »

dxbydt wrote: post #169
strictfp wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a preacher of Agile. I talk about it in order to get things done. Theoretical work is important, but let's face it, most customers want products, not research. Your average person declaring himself 'theoretically oriented' is no good in delivering products. He hasn't understood the bigger goal and will just waste the clients time and money training himself to write better algos. Most likely he will be rather unex…

> most customers want products, not research "I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these m…

> customers can go fuck themselves.

Oh, dear Lord. This comment makes me hurt.

Your salary from Bank of America comes from customers -- even if you're paid from investment, the investment is only there because Bank of America has customers. Your research in academia is paid for by customers of the institution, both former and present, and possibly governments (who are also interested in the product of the research). Your shortsighted world view is tragically common in those who favor academia, and without paying customers driving research into new areas, your precious academia wouldn't exist and you'd do well to understand that. Money is everything.

What the hell do you think the point of academia is? All throughout history, the sciences are almost always advanced due to a pressing need or mistake from practical execution.

> cs is what matters.

Execution is the only thing in the world that matters. You are basically admitting that you're the idea guy, searching for a "technical co-founder".

Had Mark Zuckerberg spent a lot of time worried about the runtime efficiency of parts of his code or whether there was a more efficient algorithm for sorting friends, Facebook would be nothing today. He executed and didn't give a shit, because he wasn't exercising computer science, he was exercising building a product.

Surely people went back and made things more efficient as Facebook scaled, but I've been at a rapidly-growing startup a while, and I haven't made my product more efficient through many computer science advances. Most have been using better software, better network topology, better configuration, less dumb code, and so on.

Your attitude completely misses what the article is explaining, and, frankly, your ad hominem on the guy talking about Agile is completely out of place when practically your entire LinkedIn profile is buzzwords, just your field instead of his.

(Aside: I love that HN makes it really easy to build a list of no-hires, fairly easily, just by observing how people think and communicate.)

Re: Let's Not Call It "Computer Science" If We Really Mean "Computer Programming"

#174

Post by argv_empty »

mquander wrote: post #101
jerf wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to answer this because a lot of the trite answers are indeed false. A computer science student may be more able to tell you whether an algorithm is O(n^3) or O(2^n), but the normal (and experienced) programmer will be able to tell you either is "slow" and fix it just as quickly. But there is a style of thinking that can come out of a study of computer science that can be very difficult to obtain on your ow…

Try the following thought experiment: Person A spends four years getting a BS in CS at a top-tier school, learning about programming at least for a few hours a day on average, with the benefit of a well-considered curriculum and instruction by wizards. Person B spends four years working full-time on something interesting at Google, which probably gives her more total hands-on-keyboard time, and also access to some mi…

What are the chances of actually getting a job at Google straight out of high school?

Re: Let's Not Call It "Computer Science" If We Really Mean "Computer Programming"

#175

Post by mquander »

argv_empty wrote: post #174
mquander wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try the following thought experiment: Person A spends four years getting a BS in CS at a top-tier school, learning about programming at least for a few hours a day on average, with the benefit of a well-considered curriculum and instruction by wizards. Person B spends four years working full-time on something interesting at Google, which probably gives her more total hands-on-keyboard time, and also access to some mi…

What are the chances of actually getting a job at Google straight out of high school?

It would be pretty tough, although you can replace "Google" with "any roughly Google-quality set of coworkers and projects." But the original question was whether it's really "very difficult to obtain on your own" the sort of perspective and knowledge you get from taking a CS degree. I doubt that, and I think that most people who are similarly smart and spend a few years working hard with other smart people will pick up many of the same skills.

Re: Let's Not Call It "Computer Science" If We Really Mean "Computer Programming"

#176

Post by mcguire »

jsprinkles wrote: post #173
dxbydt wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most customers want products, not research "I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these m…

> customers can go fuck themselves. Oh, dear Lord. This comment makes me hurt. Your salary from Bank of America comes from customers -- even if you're paid from investment, the investment is only there because Bank of America has customers. Your research in academia is paid for by customers of the institution, both former and present, and possibly governments (who are also interested in the product of the research).…

"I haven't made my product more efficient through many computer science advances. Most have been using better software, better network topology, better configuration, less dumb code, and so on."

Please stop. You're getting irony all over my desk here.

Re: Let's Not Call It "Computer Science" If We Really Mean "Computer Programming"

#177

Post by emmelaich »

ashishgandhi wrote: post #146
jsprinkles wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was personally not cut out to do scut work. I had zero interest and respect for maintenance, unit tests, requirements & specs, UML modelling, refactoring, waterfall method, agile, kanban... The world in which this is "scut work" is not the world I want to live in. Let's be honest. You don't want to do practical, you'd rather do theoretical, and that's fine. However, don't disrespect practical just because it isn'…

Are you saying people who do theoretical work don't don't it in practical ways? As an example, take Google's self-driving cars. Would you say the meat of their body of work theoretical? But would say the code they (Sebastian Thrun himself, and others involved in the project) write code that's not very practical, readable, maintainable or without tests? I would say what they do is theoretical work. And they write prac…

Everything's practical. The difference between theory and practise is time and distance.

"Nothing I have ever done is of the slightest practical use." - G.H.Hardy

Re: Let's Not Call It "Computer Science" If We Really Mean "Computer Programming"

#178

Post by jsprinkles »

mcguire wrote: post #176
jsprinkles wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> customers can go fuck themselves. Oh, dear Lord. This comment makes me hurt. Your salary from Bank of America comes from customers -- even if you're paid from investment, the investment is only there because Bank of America has customers. Your research in academia is paid for by customers of the institution, both former and present, and possibly governments (who are also interested in the product of the research).…

"I haven't made my product more efficient through many computer science advances. Most have been using better software, better network topology, better configuration, less dumb code, and so on." Please stop. You're getting irony all over my desk here.

> Please stop.

No. I will not silence my opinion because you disagree. Although your comment is almost devoid of insight, I would infer that you're implying I'm being obtuse regarding the role of computer science in making my stuff better. Example of a performance improvement: choosing a frobnicator that uses multiple cores to frobnicate instead of a single core to frobnicate. Do I have computer science to thank for that? In a way, the same way I have medical research to thank for Advil. However, it's disingenuous to say medical research got rid of my headache. The Advil did.

Computer science has its place, but it needs to be more aware of that place. This thread is a very poignant demonstration of that.

Re: Let's Not Call It "Computer Science" If We Really Mean "Computer Programming"

#179

Post by jsprinkles »

argv_empty wrote: post #174
mquander wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try the following thought experiment: Person A spends four years getting a BS in CS at a top-tier school, learning about programming at least for a few hours a day on average, with the benefit of a well-considered curriculum and instruction by wizards. Person B spends four years working full-time on something interesting at Google, which probably gives her more total hands-on-keyboard time, and also access to some mi…

What are the chances of actually getting a job at Google straight out of high school?

I work with two people who did.

Re: Let's Not Call It "Computer Science" If We Really Mean "Computer Programming"

#180

Post by robyates »

dxbydt wrote: post #118

fwiw, an opposite take, from a decade ago. at my cs pgm, the assistant professors were supposed to make a presentation on day 1 so the grad students could make an informed decision which prof to work with, which subjects to sign up for. the software engg prof was a glib, entreprenurial hotshot who said "my students have been placed at netscape, sun, microsoft, oracle". he talked about industry partnerships, internshi…

Reminds me of this: http://www.scott-a-s.com/cs-is-not-math/
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