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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?

#51

Post by CuriousCosmic »

gnode wrote: post #27
GolDDranks wrote: post #16

Homomorphic encryption is a mind-blower. But I fear that we may never see it in it's fullest glory. It's going to be computationally too expensive or too impractical for reason or another. One can still hope.

Aren't ring confidential transactions (RingCT), used in some cryptocurrencies a form of homomorphic encryption which is being applied now?

Monero uses ring confidential transactions as of now and zCash's zkSNARKs take advantage of some form of homomorphic encryption.

There are probably more but those are the ones off the top of my head.

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

#53

Post by amelius »

whatshisface wrote: post #39
Davidbrcz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Rust looks like a step towards practical formal verification just because of its design philosophy. I think what we're doing is making engineering languages more and more verifiable as research languages become more and more expressive. Eventually they'll meet in the middle and we'll have formal verification in "real life."

Yes, but: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16442743

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

#54

Post by adrianN »

whatshisface wrote: post #39
Davidbrcz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Rust looks like a step towards practical formal verification just because of its design philosophy. I think what we're doing is making engineering languages more and more verifiable as research languages become more and more expressive. Eventually they'll meet in the middle and we'll have formal verification in "real life."

No progress in language theory can fix the fundamental problem of software verification: you need a formal specification to have anything to verify. Who wants to write not only a detailed spec for their code, but a spec that has well defined semantics in some kind of logic? Nobody, that's who. There are very few properties that you care about that are both sufficiently easy to encode in a formal specification and not provided automatically by a safe language.

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

#55

Post by [deleted] »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #46
Davidbrcz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 muc…

[deleted]

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

#56

Post by Shoue »

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…

We're definitely moving in the direction. Someone already mentioned Rust, and Typescript is gaining traction in web dev. Banks like Barclays and Standard Chartered already have Haskell teams, and I've noticed more and more Haskell jobs popping up over the years (in London). Scala is already realtively popular.

Formal verification is used in some niche areas (BAE, Galois). Proof Engineer is a real role some companies are looking to fill.

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

#57

Post by xyproto »

rhizome31 wrote: post #26
Davidbrcz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not so long ago the same could be said about AI.

And perpetual energy! Guess we, as humans, just aren't great at predicting the future, regardless of what the last 50 years looked like.

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

#58

Post by jonbaer »

I think anything "emerging" will come from the forms of unconventional computing [1] ... ML/DL/AI are being rehashed on faster silicon hardware, I wouldn't call it hype but it will be better applied to another form of hardware - once it's realized. I personally think reversible computing [2] (once understood) to make the most sense in terms of energy efficiency in CS (much needed) ...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconventional_computing

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing

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

#59

Post by bor0 »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #46
Davidbrcz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 muc…

To me, personally, the biggest barrier was lack of a proper introduction with a lot of examples.

I try to break this barrier a bit with my upcoming book: Gentle Introduction to Dependent Types with Idris.

I am very interested in this area but it is impossible for newcomers to get a grasp of it without too much digging. Logical Foundations was OK but I was still missing the theoretical explanation ("why does this tactic work? it is magic!").

So with accumulated knowledge from IRC, forums I hope to address this.

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

#60

Post by terminalcommand »

niklasd wrote: post #50
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 insp…

Slightly off-topic but I wanted to ask why and when did you start studying CS after law.

I recently graduated from law school and now am an intern at a law firm. I have a strong interest for CS, and it bothered me for a long time that I went to law school instead of CS.

I'v overcome those feelings over the years and dedicated myself to become a lawyer. But your post caught my interest.

I'd be glad if you could share some of the story behind you studying cs after getting your law degree.

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