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Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?

#41

Post by janemanos »

gota wrote: post #12

Process Mining [1]. When I programmed a rather complex logistics simulator at work I told my coworkers 'whoever comes up with a way of instantiating a simulator from data will be praised forever'. Turned out process discovery is a thing (well, one of _the_ things in PM). And there's so much cool stuff to do and being done. I'm now on the last stretch of my doctorate researching the mining of typical plans in non-comp…

Have you ever had a look into analyzing processes with a graph database like e.g. ArangoDB. Wonder if that would make sense for your needs. You can traverse along the processes, find patterns or use distributed graph processing with Pregel analyze from different angels. edit:typo

Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?

#42

Post by lnsru »

tugberkk wrote: post #22

Internet of Things. It is still in development and there are lots of stuff to work on.

Just another hype. Sensors and internet are here for decades. Internet is ok, but “things” are way too expensive and not reliable yet.

Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?

#43

Post by RantyDave »

I am certain there will be an emerging field in AI for engineering. Suspension that 'learns' how to keep the car flat; buildings that start shuffling warm air from a to b before it's needed ... things like that. Programming is going to change from "explain how to do it" to "show it what you want", and this has got to be a big deal.

Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?

#44

Post by denzil_correa »

resiros wrote: post #14

I think most interesting computer science fields are actually application of CS in other domains. Science changed a lot in the last decades, moving from a genius in a room looking at the data and coming up with grand theory to have vast amounts of data that no single human can make sense of. The work of the computer scientist is to quickly understand problems from various fields then solve it using tailor-made algori…

> We're working on leveraging sparse experimental data for protein structure prediction. To do that, we end up using algorithms and ideas from different various CS fields, from machine learning, to robotics, to distributed systems. Other people are working on exciting fields like computation protein design, studying drug protein interaction in silico..

Are there particular methods you use to deal with little and sparse data?

Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?

#46

Post by CuriousCosmic »

Davidbrcz wrote: post #24
meuk wrote: post #6

AI, machine learning, and neural networks are, of courwe, booming, but I consider them to be hyped. I consider type theory and formal verification to be more promising (but more academic). Distributed systems and everything having to do with parallel and/or high-performance systems is a good midway between what the industry likes and what's interesting from an academic point of view.

Haha. Formal verification has been around for 40/50 years and we can't say it is a wide success from a industrial point of view. It has some achievements in terms of results/methods and projects checked, but on a daily basis, pretty much no one uses it. We are ages away of having every programmer understanding formal verification and having all programs verified/proved. Type theory is in a similar situation. Many iss…

The biggest barrier to adoption of formal verification that I have seen as someone just starting in the field (working through Software Foundations and have a number of projects planned with SPARK, Frama-C, and LiquidHaskell) is the lack of groundwork. Verifying just your own code is complex enough as it is but working with libraries without any clear specification of their interfaces and behaviours makes this so much harder.

I think there is real value in having verified libraries or at least libraries with well defined specs so that interfacing with other code wasn't so tedious. I think this issue is starting to be overcome with regard to the usage of strong type systems. Truly strongly typed languages are finally getting the libraries and communities built up so that they don't seem quite as daunting.

Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?

#47

Post by bobosha »

RantyDave wrote: post #43

I am certain there will be an emerging field in AI for engineering. Suspension that 'learns' how to keep the car flat; buildings that start shuffling warm air from a to b before it's needed ... things like that. Programming is going to change from "explain how to do it" to "show it what you want", and this has got to be a big deal.

I think you mean "Programming by Example".

Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?

#48

Post by denzil_correa »

Davidbrcz wrote: post #24
meuk wrote: post #6

AI, machine learning, and neural networks are, of courwe, booming, but I consider them to be hyped. I consider type theory and formal verification to be more promising (but more academic). Distributed systems and everything having to do with parallel and/or high-performance systems is a good midway between what the industry likes and what's interesting from an academic point of view.

Haha. Formal verification has been around for 40/50 years and we can't say it is a wide success from a industrial point of view. It has some achievements in terms of results/methods and projects checked, but on a daily basis, pretty much no one uses it. We are ages away of having every programmer understanding formal verification and having all programs verified/proved. Type theory is in a similar situation. Many iss…

> Formal verification has been around for 40/50 years and we can't say it is a wide success from a industrial point of view. It has some achievements in terms of results/methods and projects checked, but on a daily basis, pretty much no one uses it.

Formal verification is an essential part of mission critical applications. Therefore, even though they might be few in number - their impact is pretty significant and "wide".

Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?

#49

Post by zaarn »

lnsru wrote: post #42
tugberkk wrote: post #22

Internet of Things. It is still in development and there are lots of stuff to work on.

Just another hype. Sensors and internet are here for decades. Internet is ok, but “things” are way too expensive and not reliable yet.

IMO the best IoT is the DIY IoT, the kind that isn't really IoT but rather "I put Wifi on a raspi and connected it to a PCB".

Thankfully the online resources around electronics are plentiful and PCBs can be had for under 10$ incl. S&H.

That way I can make all my lighting IoT without having to deal with the garbage of the IoT industry.

Re: Ask HN: What are the most interesting emerging fields in computer science?

#50

Post by niklasd »

resiros wrote: post #14

I think most interesting computer science fields are actually application of CS in other domains. Science changed a lot in the last decades, moving from a genius in a room looking at the data and coming up with grand theory to have vast amounts of data that no single human can make sense of. The work of the computer scientist is to quickly understand problems from various fields then solve it using tailor-made algori…

Yes! I studied law before CS and now I learn all these algorithms which deal with questions about how to do something efficiently – and these algorithms are unkown by all these people thinking about important questions in this field.

And I think this also applies to other fields. I gave the book "Algorithms To Live By" (which is basically an overview of CS algorithms) to a medicine student and he was immediately inspiried and came up with ideas on how to apply these ideas on his research. CS algorithms are just so basically true that I think they should be more universally known.

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