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Ask HN: What are lesser known / taught subfields of Computer Science?

7 points by entha_saava 6y ago

RNeff 6y ago
Program verification. How to design and implement correct programs.
giantg2 6y ago
Stenography comes to mind. It seems it just gets mentioned in cryptography classes. Not sure that's very useful though. I think machine learning is not taught enough relative to it's growing demand. COBOL is a language that is still used in many places and will need people to replace those who are retiring, so I feel that is lesser known and not taught in many places.
diehunde 6y ago
Some I can think of: - Automata theory - Complexity theory (P vs NP stuff, not the one from leetcode problems) - Verification - Optimization using stuff like genetic algorithms, ant-colony algorithms, particle swarm, simulated annealing, etc. Not sure how to call that area. In my case it was an AI course. - Fuzzy logic - Scientific computing and Numerical analysis (CFD, finite elements, etc) - Information theory
- kingkongjaffa 6y ago
  > - Scientific computing and Numerical analysis (CFD, finite elements, etc) Yes please, if we could have more software engineers working on mechanical/aeronautical/civil/<physical> engineering tools that would be great. Currently the state of the art takes a long time to get out of PHDs and into industry, and when it does it is in the hands of a few companies that sell expensive software licenses. The likes of at Ansys, Siemens (NX), CD-adapco, You can access FOSS tools like open-foam but the average engineer doesn't have the skillset to also wrangle the tool as well as their domain problem. An area I was always fascinated with but never had chance to dig into it was topology optimization to generate structures (or flow paths) to accomodate some given boundaries and physics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topology_optimization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topology_optimization
  - diehunde 6y ago
    > Yes please, if we could have more software engineers working on mechanical/aeronautical/civil/<physical> engineering tools that would be great. That was my favorite subject in college and I wanted to pursue that area but sadly we didn't have any experts in the CS department. All of them were from the Mechanical Engineering department and they were extremely disconnected.

7 points by entha_saava 6y ago

Program verification. How to design and implement correct programs.

Stenography comes to mind. It seems it just gets mentioned in cryptography classes. Not sure that's very useful though. I think machine learning is not taught enough relative to it's growing demand. COBOL is a language that is still used in many places and will need people to replace those who are retiring, so I feel that is lesser known and not taught in many places.

diehunde 6y ago

Some I can think of: - Automata theory - Complexity theory (P vs NP stuff, not the one from leetcode problems) - Verification - Optimization using stuff like genetic algorithms, ant-colony algorithms, particle swarm, simulated annealing, etc. Not sure how to call that area. In my case it was an AI course. - Fuzzy logic - Scientific computing and Numerical analysis (CFD, finite elements, etc) - Information theory

kingkongjaffa 6y ago
> - Scientific computing and Numerical analysis (CFD, finite elements, etc) Yes please, if we could have more software engineers working on mechanical/aeronautical/civil/<physical> engineering tools that would be great. Currently the state of the art takes a long time to get out of PHDs and into industry, and when it does it is in the hands of a few companies that sell expensive software licenses. The likes of at Ansys, Siemens (NX), CD-adapco, You can access FOSS tools like open-foam but the average engineer doesn't have the skillset to also wrangle the tool as well as their domain problem. An area I was always fascinated with but never had chance to dig into it was topology optimization to generate structures (or flow paths) to accomodate some given boundaries and physics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topology_optimization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topology_optimization
- diehunde 6y ago
  > Yes please, if we could have more software engineers working on mechanical/aeronautical/civil/<physical> engineering tools that would be great. That was my favorite subject in college and I wanted to pursue that area but sadly we didn't have any experts in the CS department. All of them were from the Mechanical Engineering department and they were extremely disconnected.