There are tons, tons, of examples of "established territory" in CS that do not exhibit "mathematical rigor". When something works in CS people seem to say "good

There are tons, tons, of examples of "established territory" in CS that do not exhibit "mathematical rigor". When something works in CS people seem to say "good enough" and use it. In mathematics (or as you pointed out, in physics) it becomes an "open question" and people begin the hard work of explaining the phenomenon by applying rigor. In maths, it's a constant march to push the boundaries, where the boundary is defined as that which is interesting but not yet well defined. In CS it seems that the boundary is that which is not yet a solved problem, where "problem" is something that needs getting done. Once, in CS, we can get it done, people move on. It's not often that in the enterprise CS process (academic is a whole other beast) it is assumed that there should be an application of rigor or an attempt to well define "solutions" before moving on. There is simply the accumulation of technical debt. But, in my opinion, technical debt has amassed at the systemic level to such a point where it's starting to look like a ponzi scheme. Sure, it works, so long as we keep throwing good money after bad. But, stop investing, and one can see it for what it is. In maths on the other hand, step away from it all for a year or two, and when you go back everything is still just as valuable and beautiful. edit: what i would love to see is a "category theory" for programming languages / paradigms such that moving between them is well defined. it boggles my mind that translating between two programming languages isn't trivial. if both are well defined, one should be able to translate one to the other precisely given one is willing to define the translations. there should be zero guess work or heuristics in the process.