Doug Comer: How to Insult a Computer Scientist

#1

Post by dedalus » Fri, Jan 16, 2009, 2:13 AM UTC

Doug Comer: How to Insult a Computer Scientist
cs.purdue.edu

Re: Doug Comer: How to Insult a Computer Scientist

#2

Post by anuraggoel » Fri, Jan 16, 2009, 6:09 AM UTC

Doug Comer seems to be quite disillusioned with academia - he has posted several similarly wry CS 'essays' on his website: http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/

Re: Doug Comer: How to Insult a Computer Scientist

#3

Post by neilc » Fri, Jan 16, 2009, 6:38 AM UTC

anuraggoel wrote: post #2

Doug Comer seems to be quite disillusioned with academia - he has posted several similarly wry CS 'essays' on his website: http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/

Either that, or he just has a sense of humor about it.

Re: Doug Comer: How to Insult a Computer Scientist

#4

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 16, 2009, 6:47 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Doug Comer: How to Insult a Computer Scientist

#5

Post by amichail » Fri, Jan 16, 2009, 6:48 AM UTC

anuraggoel wrote: post #2

Doug Comer seems to be quite disillusioned with academia - he has posted several similarly wry CS 'essays' on his website: http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/

There's something unrewarding about getting a research paper accepted because three reviewers thought it was good and having it only read by a hundred people.

Re: Doug Comer: How to Insult a Computer Scientist

#6

Post by delano » Fri, Jan 16, 2009, 8:06 AM UTC

Is referring to engineers as "experimentalists" part of the joke?

In any case it was a good, light read that I'll take to heart in the next version of my insulting library.

http://insults.rubyforge.org/

Re: Doug Comer: How to Insult a Computer Scientist

#7

Post by tomsaffell » Fri, Jan 16, 2009, 12:12 PM UTC

Would a computer scientist be insulted if you suggested he had wrapped a small amount of useful functionality in multiple and unnecessary levels of abstraction?

What if you suggested the same of his essays?

Re: Doug Comer: How to Insult a Computer Scientist

#8

Post by aolnerd » Fri, Jan 16, 2009, 1:50 PM UTC

Last-Modified: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 21:15:34 GMT

Re: Doug Comer: How to Insult a Computer Scientist

#9

Post by cconstantine » Fri, Jan 16, 2009, 2:46 PM UTC

anuraggoel wrote: post #2

Doug Comer seems to be quite disillusioned with academia - he has posted several similarly wry CS 'essays' on his website: http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/

Comer is just a straight out character. He's one of the few people who can legitimatly point at the internet and say "I made that".

Yes, he knows where to point to be pointing at the internet.

With that kind of work behind him it's hard to do anything else as important, and it's hard for anyone to criticize him.

Re: Doug Comer: How to Insult a Computer Scientist

#10

Post by stcredzero » Fri, Jan 16, 2009, 4:05 PM UTC

I once witnessed a wily 40-something Master's student torturing one of the department's young star PhD candidates. The PhD student had caught one of his mistakes and was taking it back, as any honorable academic should. The Master's student continued on, pretending as if the PhD student was insisting on the correctness of his earlier assertion. You could see the urgency with which the PhD student was trying to roll over and expose his belly, and his perplexity at that not working.

Never have I seen someone so distressed at being told he was right.