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I don't dispute at all that theoretical CS is practically useful, I love it myself and think it offers amazing tools for thought. But my hunch is (and I'm empha
by ookdatnog 6y ago
I don't dispute at all that theoretical CS is practically useful, I love it myself and think it offers amazing tools for thought. But my hunch is (and I'm emphasizing that I'm speculating here) that only people who like the material end up retaining enough to see the applications. I feel like some of my fellow students, including ones that I felt were smart (but who were application-oriented learners who have trouble focusing if they didn't see applications right away), had to drag themselves through the theoretical material to barely pass and then promptly forget about it. I imagine their perspective is:
1. They have to work through material that does not particularly interest them and is quite hard, but employers insist that they must master this stuff if they want a good position.
2. In their work environment, no one ever asks them to actually use theoretical CS concepts, and they don't spontaneously see applications themselves.
3. Therefore, they feel academia is out of touch and teaching irrelevant material that has no practical application. With my earlier comment I wanted to point out that I don't believe academia is to blame for their suffering.
- learc83 6y agoThat's the thing, it is useful, so I don't blame companies for wanting people who know CS theory. And when I hire people, even though I hate doing adversarial whiteboard coding, I will probe to find out if people understand a bit of theory. You can get a lot of work done without theoretical knowledge, (but the end result is often not as good, and it usually takes longer). Combine that with the fact that CS theory is hard, and you get a lot of people complaining about how theoretical CS is useless outside of academia. It's basically an extension of "no one needs to know math beyond arithmetic in the real world".