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I loved reading how they optimized the search problem. Charlie has CS education, the way they sorted their tuples and organized their data (as long as it's not

I loved reading how they optimized the search problem. Charlie has CS education, the way they sorted their tuples and organized their data (as long as it's not by name!) reduced query times. Ironically, a CS education can help you optimize those processes even where computers are not allowed.

HarryHirsch 10y ago
What's ironic about this? Computer Science is the study of algorithms, not the study of whatever language is en vogue today. For the latter, you attend Coding Bootcamp.
- jasonjei 10y ago
  CS is not necessarily just the study of algorithms. I have a formal CS education and it encompasses everything from circuit design to algorithms to data structures to operating systems to statistics and graph, number and decision theory. Algorithms is a subset of overall theory that is a component of Computer Science and Maths. But I do agree, they've implemented some sort of hashing, with several buckets and trees to search from. It may not be efficient compared to actual computer databases, but it's the best humans can do with O(log n). Space requirement is still unfortunately O(n) but hopefully PDFs will help the ATF guys. If anything I'm saying that I'm happy people are recognizing that Computer Science has applications outside of computers, and is practically Applied Maths. A bachelor's degree in CS is only 2-3 math courses away from a minor in Maths. The irony is that a computer scientist is helpful in a computer-less environment. I guess you could say the human mind is a very advanced computer. It may not seem ironic to everyone on HN, but to the layman, what on earth could a CS person do with no computers? And the answer is a lot. After all Djikstra handwrote his algorithms on paper.
nzp 10y ago
Nothing ironic about that. To paraphrase Hal Abelson, computer science is as much about computers as biology is about microscopes.
- jasonjei 10y ago
  Amen

HarryHirsch 10y ago

What's ironic about this? Computer Science is the study of algorithms, not the study of whatever language is en vogue today. For the latter, you attend Coding Bootcamp.

jasonjei 10y ago
CS is not necessarily just the study of algorithms. I have a formal CS education and it encompasses everything from circuit design to algorithms to data structures to operating systems to statistics and graph, number and decision theory. Algorithms is a subset of overall theory that is a component of Computer Science and Maths. But I do agree, they've implemented some sort of hashing, with several buckets and trees to search from. It may not be efficient compared to actual computer databases, but it's the best humans can do with O(log n). Space requirement is still unfortunately O(n) but hopefully PDFs will help the ATF guys. If anything I'm saying that I'm happy people are recognizing that Computer Science has applications outside of computers, and is practically Applied Maths. A bachelor's degree in CS is only 2-3 math courses away from a minor in Maths. The irony is that a computer scientist is helpful in a computer-less environment. I guess you could say the human mind is a very advanced computer. It may not seem ironic to everyone on HN, but to the layman, what on earth could a CS person do with no computers? And the answer is a lot. After all Djikstra handwrote his algorithms on paper.

nzp 10y ago

Nothing ironic about that. To paraphrase Hal Abelson, computer science is as much about computers as biology is about microscopes.

jasonjei 10y ago
Amen