Howard Chu (hyc@symas.com) on 2/14/08 wrote:
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>How very laughable. The computer science PhDs I've met couldn't even make effective
>use of *single-core* hardware. In my experience, anyone with a PhD in computer science
>needs to be kept very far away from actual computers. Like the newly minted CS PhD
>we hired at JPL, who decided it was a good idea to actually implement an FFT using
>recursion. I had no idea you could make an FT so slow (screw the "F")... These PhDs
>are probably the last guys you want telling you how to chart a course for the future.

Interesting. Curiously, I work in the high performance numerical computing field, and all of my (former, potential, and current) bosses, I mean the ones who write optimized algorithms in assembly for a living - they all have *non-CS* education, at least originally - all of them majoring in either physics or math (but with Ph.D.'s), though I've seen one coming from chemistry.

But I don't know if this can be generalized to saying that a CS Ph.D. is incompetent when it comes to writing fast code. *If* this indeed is the case, then maybe it's just because a lot of CS programs in academia focus more on higher level languages and abstractions, omitting the engineering component. If I recall properly, one of my CS professors joked "Computer Science is the only "science" that's not."

(Actually, why not call CS "computerology" or "informatics" - sounds more elegant to me.)

As to Dr. Patterson, I am highly grateful for his (and Hennessy's) "Computer Organization & Design" - this was what got me really excited about computer science back in my sophomore year in 2000.

Just thought I could put my 2 cents in.

-Ilya