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CompSci theory hasn't helped me with the complexity of the industry i work in. It hasn't helped me when i've misunderstood something in our domain. It hasn't he

CompSci theory hasn't helped me with the complexity of the industry i work in. It hasn't helped me when i've misunderstood something in our domain. It hasn't helped me release / distribute a product easier or faster or cheaper. It hasn't helped me navigate team dynamics or how to work effectively with others. It hasn't helped me write better technical texts. So for some very specific cases, in my career (and i suspect for many business application developers) set theory has been the most useful thing i learned in CompSci. How much of a real world day do i spend using that knowledge? 0.0something% on average. In fairness, It has sometimes helped me get a product finished sooner but this is tenuous at best because i can point to far greater influences from learning how to use specific tools that have helped me get to "done" sooner. The difference between real world developer and CompSci isn't necessarily in more effective use of CompSci.

UncleMeat 6y ago
All this is true, but when I look at undergrad curricula for other engineering disciplines I don't see this stuff either. And the software engineering courses I did have in undergrad were terrible.
- vbtemp 6y ago
  Software engineering needs to be learned on the job. I see lots of new grads that take classes in "Agile" and I cringe just knowing how instead they could be taking difficult courses in graph theory, theory of computation, abstract algebra, advanced algorithms, distributed systems, or any other number of advanced topics. As we get older it's easier to pick up tricks of the trade (various Git workflows, "agile", etc)... but it gets harder to sit down to do 3 hours of homework 4 days a week doing your pushdown automata or linear algebra exercises.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    > but it gets harder to sit down to do 3 hours of homework 4 days a week doing your pushdown automata or linear algebra exercises. 38 year old studying astrodynamics for work. Can attest to the difficulty of this. No kids yet, that helps, but the wife and I are planning on starting a family soon so it'll get even harder with increased demands on my time.
vbtemp 6y ago
It sounds like you work in an industry that doesn't strictly require frequently delving into foundational theory in CS. I do believe it would be a mistake to conclude its useless, however, as there are many other industries that do need it, and people who are not in touch with the theory probably would not be competitive in those industries.
- wolco2 6y ago
  From your prespective how common are those types of roles in all industries as a whole? There are interesting compiler roles but the vast majority who learn how to build a compiler never use it day to day work. Would you recommend spending more time building compilers to better compete for those few roles or would you recommend a different approach?
  - vbtemp 6y ago
    Challenges that benefit tremendously from just a bit of a dive into theory are all over the place. This has been true for me in my career as a software engineer whether I'm working at an energy company, federal research lab, tech startup, or networking services company. The key part is that it's not apparent (or apparently needed) unless you are familiar with the material.
  - necheffa 6y ago
    I use most of my CS skills almost daily. I may not be writing compilers professionally, but on the surface, understanding parsing has gotten me out of more than a few tight corners. More abstractly, there are lessens to be learned in designing large applications; and appreciating the difference between a finite state machine and a deterministic turing machine, including the types of problems they can solve and how much of a pain in the ass one is to write compared to the other.
  - VRay 6y ago
    I work in firmware, and 99.9% of the time the most exotic data structure we touch is a linked list CS still comes in handy though, especially computer engineering to understand some of the workings of the hardware Occasionally I'll use real CS knowledge when I'm building tools for work or working on games in my free time. Full disclosure, I didn't actually study CS in school though.. I studied EE and then went and learned CS via Wikipedia when I needed it to find a better-paying coding job.
bcheung 6y ago
This is true for the most part. But having the CS knowledge allows you to create much more efficient solutions once at scale. I've personally revamped core parts of a product at previous companies to be over 1,000x more efficient just by applying some CS principles. This translates to $100K/mo+ in savings for a company that is at scale.
- helloitsian 6y ago
  I have to ask though... Was it at scale?
  - bcheung 6y ago
    I guess that's a relative term. But hosting bill was around $250K/mo from what I remember.
dkarl 6y ago
Maybe it's easy to overlook these things when you have a really deep computer science background, but coming to software engineering from a non-CS background (math degree) I found lots of valuable knowledge in CS. The most important parts for me would be: - State machines. I run into a lot of state machines, especially incompletely specified ones. Not that everybody gets these wrong if they haven't studied state machines in a textbook and worked the exercises at the end of the chapter, but recognizing "oh, this is a state machine" gives me a mental framework, a notation, a vocabulary that other developers understand, and a better ability to understand when a problem is underspecified or inconsistent. - Queueing theory and algorithmic complexity. These two usually come in handy from the perspective of spotting and avoiding stupid mistakes. It's true that people can do a pretty decent job from a handful of rules of thumb, but not everybody has that minimum knowledge, and sometimes a problem has a twist that an imprecise rule of thumb doesn't account for. - Distributed systems. Just understanding the solution of a few problems in depth, and knowing from that how hard simple things really are, is incredibly valuable. Without that background, people can naively tackle extremely complex problems, bash their heads against them for years, and still underestimate the difficulty of the problems they've created for themselves by orders of magnitude. In general, the rigor of doing theoretical problems, the discipline of actually proving things, creates habits that uncover lots of non-happy path possibilities.
- dgb23 6y ago
  I also don't have a CS degree and am self-taught. And I very much agree with you that many CS concepts have quite a practical impact. Some of them more on the side of approach and selecting the right tech/solution, but some have a more hands-on practical use. - State machines: completely agree. I use them especially in the context of user facing stuff, like GUIs, animations and so on. In fact I would even argue that they are _inherent_: Even if you don't recognize and specifically structure your code around them, they are still _there_ just smeared all over your logic. - A&D I find ubiquitous are: sets, graphs, trees. Sets especially are underused and graphs are the most expressive data structures if you need them and can help you model complex, long lasting models. - Relational algebra is likely one of the most important concepts. It is fundamental to the Swiss army knife of databases: SQL. - Algorithmic complexity: I rarely use this formally, but it really helps to get a decent intuition for performance.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
I have a degree in math and physics. I used it exactly once, in one aspect on one job. It was down below 0.0something% - need one or three more zeroes... ... until I took a job in X-ray imaging. We were working on a surgical X-ray (C arm) that could pinch-hit as a CT machine. And suddenly everything was 3D coordinate transforms and fourier transforms, plus X-ray physics, up to my eyeballs. The theory stuff isn't useful... until it is. And when it is, it helps to have it.
culopatin 6y ago
I have no experience in the field and I would like to quickly get in it. I want to dive in with experience and I’m trying to figure out what things would get me there quicker if someone wanted to tutor me at work. What would you say are the things in your experience that are most useful to be able to contribute in a development team?
- willcipriano 6y ago
  I'd say the ability to solve a real problem in the programming language of your choice is a minimum criteria to call yourself a programmer. Getting there would require a basic understanding of that language, data structures generally, many problems revolve around databases or REST APIs so learn how to use those, I'd also throw in version control and how to write unit tests.
  - culopatin 6y ago
    Excellent, much appreciated
visarga 6y ago
On the topic of useless subjects (on a personal level) I nominate chemistry. Never had to use it or depend on chemical knowledge, never had to write a chemical reaction or compute masses except as a student. So many years spent on chemistry instead of learning some other subject.
- dxdm 6y ago
  I also never use chemistry knowledge for anything, ever. But I find it quite interesting to know a little bit about how matter works, and how it combines into things that make up my body and (hey, let's go there) mind. I had to take an intro class in college to learn to appreciate all that, though; high school chemistry class was pretty dull and useless for me.
  - itronitron 6y ago
    I find that hearing about how stuff works and how that directly relates to daily life is easy for me (and probably most people) to internalize and retain. For example something that has stuck with me since high school was hearing that H20 expanding when it freezes into a solid is what makes ice skating possible. Pressure exerted by the skate blade forces the surface of the ice into a liquid state which makes it slippery. Where educational curriculum tend to lose people is by overemphasizing the canon/trivia. Ironically that seems to be a result of needing to develop additional, obscure, test questions to deter students memorizing rote information or last years final exams. In regards to computer science I think there is more to gain for students by learning the history and development of particular CS solutions and discoveries as they are more likely to encounter those situations in their careers than a particular need for a CS technique.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Play Omnifactory or any modpack with gregtech. It's not 100% realistic but you're doing practical chemistry all the time.

UncleMeat 6y ago

All this is true, but when I look at undergrad curricula for other engineering disciplines I don't see this stuff either. And the software engineering courses I did have in undergrad were terrible.

vbtemp 6y ago
Software engineering needs to be learned on the job. I see lots of new grads that take classes in "Agile" and I cringe just knowing how instead they could be taking difficult courses in graph theory, theory of computation, abstract algebra, advanced algorithms, distributed systems, or any other number of advanced topics. As we get older it's easier to pick up tricks of the trade (various Git workflows, "agile", etc)... but it gets harder to sit down to do 3 hours of homework 4 days a week doing your pushdown automata or linear algebra exercises.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  > but it gets harder to sit down to do 3 hours of homework 4 days a week doing your pushdown automata or linear algebra exercises. 38 year old studying astrodynamics for work. Can attest to the difficulty of this. No kids yet, that helps, but the wife and I are planning on starting a family soon so it'll get even harder with increased demands on my time.

vbtemp 6y ago

It sounds like you work in an industry that doesn't strictly require frequently delving into foundational theory in CS. I do believe it would be a mistake to conclude its useless, however, as there are many other industries that do need it, and people who are not in touch with the theory probably would not be competitive in those industries.

wolco2 6y ago
From your prespective how common are those types of roles in all industries as a whole? There are interesting compiler roles but the vast majority who learn how to build a compiler never use it day to day work. Would you recommend spending more time building compilers to better compete for those few roles or would you recommend a different approach?
- vbtemp 6y ago
  Challenges that benefit tremendously from just a bit of a dive into theory are all over the place. This has been true for me in my career as a software engineer whether I'm working at an energy company, federal research lab, tech startup, or networking services company. The key part is that it's not apparent (or apparently needed) unless you are familiar with the material.
- necheffa 6y ago
  I use most of my CS skills almost daily. I may not be writing compilers professionally, but on the surface, understanding parsing has gotten me out of more than a few tight corners. More abstractly, there are lessens to be learned in designing large applications; and appreciating the difference between a finite state machine and a deterministic turing machine, including the types of problems they can solve and how much of a pain in the ass one is to write compared to the other.
- VRay 6y ago
  I work in firmware, and 99.9% of the time the most exotic data structure we touch is a linked list CS still comes in handy though, especially computer engineering to understand some of the workings of the hardware Occasionally I'll use real CS knowledge when I'm building tools for work or working on games in my free time. Full disclosure, I didn't actually study CS in school though.. I studied EE and then went and learned CS via Wikipedia when I needed it to find a better-paying coding job.

bcheung 6y ago

This is true for the most part. But having the CS knowledge allows you to create much more efficient solutions once at scale. I've personally revamped core parts of a product at previous companies to be over 1,000x more efficient just by applying some CS principles. This translates to $100K/mo+ in savings for a company that is at scale.

helloitsian 6y ago
I have to ask though... Was it at scale?
- bcheung 6y ago
  I guess that's a relative term. But hosting bill was around $250K/mo from what I remember.

dkarl 6y ago

Maybe it's easy to overlook these things when you have a really deep computer science background, but coming to software engineering from a non-CS background (math degree) I found lots of valuable knowledge in CS. The most important parts for me would be: - State machines. I run into a lot of state machines, especially incompletely specified ones. Not that everybody gets these wrong if they haven't studied state machines in a textbook and worked the exercises at the end of the chapter, but recognizing "oh, this is a state machine" gives me a mental framework, a notation, a vocabulary that other developers understand, and a better ability to understand when a problem is underspecified or inconsistent. - Queueing theory and algorithmic complexity. These two usually come in handy from the perspective of spotting and avoiding stupid mistakes. It's true that people can do a pretty decent job from a handful of rules of thumb, but not everybody has that minimum knowledge, and sometimes a problem has a twist that an imprecise rule of thumb doesn't account for. - Distributed systems. Just understanding the solution of a few problems in depth, and knowing from that how hard simple things really are, is incredibly valuable. Without that background, people can naively tackle extremely complex problems, bash their heads against them for years, and still underestimate the difficulty of the problems they've created for themselves by orders of magnitude. In general, the rigor of doing theoretical problems, the discipline of actually proving things, creates habits that uncover lots of non-happy path possibilities.

dgb23 6y ago
I also don't have a CS degree and am self-taught. And I very much agree with you that many CS concepts have quite a practical impact. Some of them more on the side of approach and selecting the right tech/solution, but some have a more hands-on practical use. - State machines: completely agree. I use them especially in the context of user facing stuff, like GUIs, animations and so on. In fact I would even argue that they are _inherent_: Even if you don't recognize and specifically structure your code around them, they are still _there_ just smeared all over your logic. - A&D I find ubiquitous are: sets, graphs, trees. Sets especially are underused and graphs are the most expressive data structures if you need them and can help you model complex, long lasting models. - Relational algebra is likely one of the most important concepts. It is fundamental to the Swiss army knife of databases: SQL. - Algorithmic complexity: I rarely use this formally, but it really helps to get a decent intuition for performance.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

I have a degree in math and physics. I used it exactly once, in one aspect on one job. It was down below 0.0something% - need one or three more zeroes... ... until I took a job in X-ray imaging. We were working on a surgical X-ray (C arm) that could pinch-hit as a CT machine. And suddenly everything was 3D coordinate transforms and fourier transforms, plus X-ray physics, up to my eyeballs. The theory stuff isn't useful... until it is. And when it is, it helps to have it.

culopatin 6y ago

I have no experience in the field and I would like to quickly get in it. I want to dive in with experience and I’m trying to figure out what things would get me there quicker if someone wanted to tutor me at work. What would you say are the things in your experience that are most useful to be able to contribute in a development team?

willcipriano 6y ago
I'd say the ability to solve a real problem in the programming language of your choice is a minimum criteria to call yourself a programmer. Getting there would require a basic understanding of that language, data structures generally, many problems revolve around databases or REST APIs so learn how to use those, I'd also throw in version control and how to write unit tests.
- culopatin 6y ago
  Excellent, much appreciated

visarga 6y ago

On the topic of useless subjects (on a personal level) I nominate chemistry. Never had to use it or depend on chemical knowledge, never had to write a chemical reaction or compute masses except as a student. So many years spent on chemistry instead of learning some other subject.

dxdm 6y ago
I also never use chemistry knowledge for anything, ever. But I find it quite interesting to know a little bit about how matter works, and how it combines into things that make up my body and (hey, let's go there) mind. I had to take an intro class in college to learn to appreciate all that, though; high school chemistry class was pretty dull and useless for me.
- itronitron 6y ago
  I find that hearing about how stuff works and how that directly relates to daily life is easy for me (and probably most people) to internalize and retain. For example something that has stuck with me since high school was hearing that H20 expanding when it freezes into a solid is what makes ice skating possible. Pressure exerted by the skate blade forces the surface of the ice into a liquid state which makes it slippery. Where educational curriculum tend to lose people is by overemphasizing the canon/trivia. Ironically that seems to be a result of needing to develop additional, obscure, test questions to deter students memorizing rote information or last years final exams. In regards to computer science I think there is more to gain for students by learning the history and development of particular CS solutions and discoveries as they are more likely to encounter those situations in their careers than a particular need for a CS technique.
imtringued 6y ago
Play Omnifactory or any modpack with gregtech. It's not 100% realistic but you're doing practical chemistry all the time.