

Why don’t computer scientists track sub-fields other than their own? - wheels
http://blog.directededge.com/2008/04/15/why-dont-computer-scientists-track-sub-fields-other-than-their-own/

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neilc
There certainly _are_ some computer scientists who are multi-disciplinarians.
At some (but not all) of the top departments, there's also a lot of
collaborative work that is done among specialists in different areas.

But I think the tendency to specialize on one or two subfields is pretty
understandable. A major part of becoming a successful academic is establishing
a reputation among the members of your subfield: regularly publishing at the
prominent conferences and getting your name recognized as someone doing good
work is a major component in whether you get funding, tenure, awards, and the
like. It is easier to establish that reputation when you concentrate on a
single subfield and a single community of academics. Trying to become
prominent in a bunch of subfields simultaneously is not impossible, but it's a
lot more difficult.

It's also a lot more effort to do good work in several unrelated fields (and
especially to do good work as both a theoretician and a practitioner). In each
subfield, there's usually a vast literature that you need to master; learning
_n_ subfields is obviously harder than learning 1.

