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freework | 1 year ago

"Theoretical computer science" is garbage.

Of all the scientific fields, computer science is the one that is mostly closely related to fields where theory is most worthless. If you have a computer science theory, then write some damn code to prove it. Then share your code. Others can then run it and replicate those results. At the "theory" phase, the idea is worthless.

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bollu|1 year ago

You are very wrong.

Many of the key results of theoretical CS is to prove impossibility. There is no code to be written when you show that something is not possible.

- Halting problem: impossibility of TM to determine if other TMs halt. - crypto: impossibility for a Turing machine to break a cryposystem in polytime - sorting lower bounds: impossibility to sort objects given only a less_than operator on them in time less than O(n log n)

and so on. There is no code to be written for these, because they are mathematical theorems.

> computer science is about computers as much as astronomy is about telescopes ~Dikjstra.

ChrisClark|1 year ago

Wow, just... wow.

Theoretical computer science is literally more solid and real than any code you could write. It's literally the mathematical foundation of how your favorite language works. It is all precise mathematical proofs, not just 'thoughts'.

hnfong|1 year ago

What are mathematical proofs but mere 'thoughts'?

(I'm only being half rhetorical. I've been thinking about this deeply lately.)