

The Future of Computer Science, and Why Every Other Major Sucks By Comparison - neilc
http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=442

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_delirium
Semi-seriously (as I assume the slides also are), I think the question's
actually pretty open, as far as fields and disciplines go. There is a lot of
cool stuff still to come in CS, but there's also a pretty big risk that CS
will no longer "own" computing to the same extent it has. CS has historically
owned _everything_ computer-related, just because nobody else could actually
operate and program computers, even when many of the main questions were non-
computational ones. For example, why is Pixar-type CG stuff associated with
CS, not with film or digital media? Basically, because it required technical
savvy that only CS had, even though the ultimate goals were
entertainment/aesthetic ones that are more in keeping with the concerns of
media practitioners. But will that continue to be true? Already scientific
computing is slowly slipping out of the ownership of CS and towards the
natural sciences; e.g. bioinformatics is as likely to be centered in a bio
department as a CS one these days.

One "failure" scenario (to use "failure" loosely, since it's subjective) is, I
think, the math one: CS becomes a narrow discipline of theory-of-computation,
systems, and PL type theory, sort of like pure math. To get money, it spends
its time teaching intro classes to other majors that the professors don't care
about: the way math teaches everyone Intro Calc, CS will teach everyone Intro
Java. And all the cool applied stuff, in this scenario, happens in other
departments, which in 10 years will all also have computers, and many will
know how to program. Not that likely, I don't think, but something to think
about.

~~~
jerf
I went through a period where I worried a bit about that, but I've stopped.
Regardless of how bioinformatics is structured politically, there's either
going to be heavy CS involvement or, well, trouble.

The thing is, in general, a "person" might be able to hack together a small
program that works for a particular problem most of the time, but it takes a
computer expert to create a program that works essentially all the time, with
good performance and strong reliability. If someone in the biology department
is capable of doing that, it's probably because they're a "double-major", for
some value of the term. A normal biology education will leave them unprepared,
and trying to hack together a strong understanding of OpenMPI or something is
certainly _possible_ but also extremely likely to leave gaping holes in their
education. (Even if one has the brains to become both a biology expert and a
parallel computing expert, one must question if that's necessarily the best
use of one's time.)

CS keeps making it easier to write programs, but the cutting edge will remain
CS's domain for a long time, and academia for some crazy reason tends to like
the cutting edge. As specialization continues its march onward it will
continue to become more and more difficult to be an expert in both $FIELD and
computer science.

~~~
etal
This viewpoint seems to go against the HN zeitgeist -- a lot of programmers
are self-taught, especially in the sciences. Just by necessity, students in
molecular biology and genetics learn some scripting and how to push data
around on the command line, and from that point a fair number of them really
get into it and start studying the finer points of software engineering on
their own.

(NB: Nearly everyone in bioinformatics has to accept some gaping holes in
their education -- who has time to become an expert in each of biochemistry,
medicine, computer science, and statistics?)

------
paulbaumgart
Google docs link to slides:
[http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.scottaaronson.c...](http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.scottaaronson.com/talks/futurecs.ppt)

~~~
haasted
Seems to be missing the jokes that the author wrote were included in the
Powerpoint notes below the slides.

~~~
llimllib
I uploaded it to slideshare with Scott's permission, and the notes are
certainly included there: [http://www.slideshare.net/llimllib/the-future-of-
computer-sc...](http://www.slideshare.net/llimllib/the-future-of-computer-
science-and-why-every-other-major-sucks-by-comparison-3705322)

~~~
DLWormwood
I might be going off on a tangent here, but that site provided a rebuttal to
that PPT...

[http://www.slideshare.net/gmaney/computer-science-is-the-
pro...](http://www.slideshare.net/gmaney/computer-science-is-the-problem)

...though reading that presentation made me feel like I was reading Time Cube
quackery. What the heck is "Automation Science?" Google didn't bring up
anything specific...

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rvanrooy
As a side note, do you think academia or startups are leading the charge in
revolutionary technologies? As a post-grad, my point of view was firmly skewed
towards academia, but the pace of iterative technological improvements by
startups makes it seem as if in the short term, startups are driving new
technologies more than academic research.

~~~
arethuza
A lot of startup founders are people who leave academia for one reason or
another (graduates, ex-academics).

Also, a lot of excellent ideas (e.g. the Web) were of almost no interest to
academic researchers in relevant fields at the time - they dismissed it as a
toy. And perhaps from a purely academic viewpoint they were right - but that
doesn't mean that it isn't of use to billions of people.

------
stuff4ben
The last line in the slide notes is the best, "you COULD come to MIT and do
something other than CS, but it would be like going to the greatest steakhouse
on earth and then ordering a salad."

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mnemonicfx
As long as new digital products are produced, it still needs the basic
software for its basic functionality. Unless if every device is using the same
technology and the same set of software.

------
joshuaeckroth
Bringing women into computer science is also an important task. Of course we
need also to address _keeping_ women in computer science, but since this
presentation is about admittance, we need to be sure women are not isolated.

Slide 6 represents Facebook with an attractive woman. (why?) Slide 13 compares
steak to salad. (why?) (and note that it's not as if women do not eat steak,
but culturally steak is a more "manly" food than salad)

~~~
Rod
_"Bringing women into computer science is also an important task"_

Why? Because political correctness says so?

I don't understand this obsession with "diversity" in the U.S., I really
don't. Personally, I think that we should instead bring intelligent and
motivated people into CS. If they're all white males, so be it. They could be
black-asian mixed-blood muslim lesbians... who cares? Just as long as they're
interested. People who choose a career based on the "coolness" factor dictated
by the clueless masses are like people who choose jobs based on the title (I
will kill the next person who claims to be hiring _code ninjas_ )... they are
sheep. We need wolves, not sheep.

~~~
cenazoic
No, because people of different genders/ethnicities bring different
perspectives to the table. Because if a field is dominated by say, white
males, the few women or non-white males are going to feel (frequently with
good reason) like they're not taken as seriously by, or seen as being as
competent as, the other white males. This is regardless of quantifiers such as
actual competence, knowledge, or experience.

While I agree with you that ideally the most motivated, competent, intelligent
people should be in X field and those are the only criteria one should care
about, the reality is all too often quite different.

~~~
apsec112
"No, because people of different genders/ethnicities bring different
perspectives to the table."

What does that even mean? What you want is _diversity of opinion_ (so that, if
one person has a bad idea, everyone else will call them on it instead of
nodding like sheep), and _diversity of talent_ (so that everyone doesn't share
the same weaknesses). I suppose those correlate with gender and ethnicity to
some extent, but why not try to hire people with lots of different resumes
(coders at big companies, startup founders, independent consultants, people
who've lived abroad in different countries, etc.)? That would be way more
efficient.

"Because if a field is dominated by say, white males, the few women or non-
white males are going to feel (frequently with good reason) like they're not
taken as seriously by, or seen as being as competent as, the other white
males."

Proof? Some fields are obviously like this, but why all of them, or even most
of them? If a field is dominated by people who are born in the winter (as many
professional sports are), is someone born in June going to be assumed to be
less competent?

