

Ask HN: How much code does a CS PhD write? - bgar

I&#x27;m considering going to graduate school to do research in functional programming. It&#x27;s something that I want to learn at a very deep level, not just practically but theoretically as well. My concern is that as a graduate student I won&#x27;t write much code. Is this true? If you&#x27;ve done a PhD, how confident did you feel in your overall programming abilities compared to before? I know a lot of theoretical CS is math and formal proofs. How much is implementation, especially in the area of FP&#x2F;Haskell&#x2F;type theory?
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wmichelin
Almost all CS PhD's I know, (mostly all professors), are pretty bad at actual
programming, and very skilled in theoretical aspects of computer science.

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slew1
Second year student here. I consider a Phd to be "research apprenticeship".
You should expect to experience the full life-cycle of research. "Writing
code" is only one part of it.

In my case, "writing code" accounts for ~25% of my time. Much more time is
spent running experiments, analysing results and publishing.

