JasonB (no@spam.com) on 2/17/08 wrote:
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>Ilya Lipovsky (lipovsky@cs.bu.edu) on 2/15/08 wrote:
>---------------------------
>>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.
>
>Heh -- there are various reasons for that; for older guys, it's because there really
>weren't many CS courses about during those days. When I was a student all of the
>oldest generation had PhDs in either physics or maths.
>
>For the younger generation, that might tell you more about the job prospects in their chosen area of study. :-)
>

I agree.

>Or, it could just be that numerical computing is an applied branch of computer
>science that is more useful in fields like physics than in computer science itself,
>and there's more motivation for a physicist to pick up the little bit of computer
>science they need to know to implement those algorithms effectively than there is
>for a computer scientist to do the reverse.
>
>>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."
>
>It's a very broad field. Some parts are definitely science, others are definitely
>engineering. (One of my friends was doing a PhD so theoretical that some
>professors complained it should really have been a maths PhD. But that was only
>because they didn't understand his work. It was definitely appropriate for CS, in
>my view; they were just from the "applied" end of the spectrum.)
>

Yes, and some parts are definitely pure mathematics. Another one of my CS professors occasionally would need help from his daughters to use his PC and to establish a modem connection to ISP. He was a "computer scientist," but he actually was a mathematician, studying and proving theorems regarding computability, reductions, complexity, and general information theory. But, in my humble personal opinion he isn't quite a computer **scientist**.

By the way, my other post mentions briefly that I don't consider computer science to be science. I just don't know if studying man-made abstract structures can be considered a science. Science entails experimentation with subsequent discovery of natural laws with subsequent fitting of various phenomena to these laws. Physics and chemistry are prime examples.

Accordingly, *if* computer science is a science, it is as much a science as, say, number theory - there are always new abstract relationships and properties to be discovered/modeled, but they are "out there," in the abstract.

>I would no more expect someone on the science end of the spectrum to write really
>tight code than I would expect a professor in mechanical engineering to do a really
>good job servicing my car. That doesn't mean they're useless, just that you need
>to hire the right person for the job, and a lack of technical skill does not reflect
>on their ability otherwise. I didn't like the code that my aforementioned friend
>wrote, but I respected the fact that he implemented a Turing machine in the K&R
>C preprocessor (the ANSI one isn't Turing complete).
>
>

Very good points, yes!