This is not a privilege of CS. Most fields will have conferences where you can learn about new research before it is published. The difference is that CS people

This is not a privilege of CS. Most fields will have conferences where you can learn about new research before it is published. The difference is that CS people rely on proceedings of the conference, while traditional fields postpone formal publication to established journals. In my opinion this puts an unnecessary burden on conference organizers, because they have in short notice to make a decision about the correctness of the article as well as other more mundane matters such as the formatting and presentation for the proceedings publication.