3 ms·

What I learned covering computer science in 2024

135 points by lr0 2y ago

lemagedurage 2y ago
It's a nice recap of recent advancements in theoretical computer science (quantum computing, adaptations to Dijkstra's algorithm, busy beavers). Though do note there's many other branches in compsci than theoretical computer science. I would've added "theoretical" in the title and the intro "... Ben Brubaker unpacks what computer science is really about" seems a bit much.
dailykoder 2y ago
>A pithy quote attributed to the pioneering researcher Edsger Dijkstra helps me explain: “Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.” Reminds me of the MIT lecture "Lecture 1A | MIT 6.001 Structure and Interpretation, 1986"[1]. And I still remind myself of that. If you fundamentally understand your problem and solve it, then writing a few characters in your favorite text editor that do the task is easy - [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY
- ffsm8 2y ago
  That's a good rule of thumb, but you should keep in mind that it's impossible to fundamentally understand most of today's challenges. I'd argue this has kinda lost it's meaning as we kept adding more and more leaky abstractions over the decades, making a fundamental understanding of the whole tech stack and what each layer does impossible. And without these abstractions, you'd struggle to even do a fraction of what today's platforms provide. But yes, the closer you can get to understanding the challenge you're solving, the better you'll likely be able to solve it. With the caveat that this understanding doesn't necessarily let you truly innovate either. It's just a rule of thumb from a time when computers were much less versatile and ubiquitous. Totally off topic from the context of the article though
  - lukan 2y ago
    But these abstractions help the developer not solve computer problems, like how to arrange and shift bits in memory, but focus on the actual problem. Only a subset of problems requires the maximum of performance. But I would also argue, there are problems, that require more than a few characters in a text editor, despite understanding them.
  - rileymat2 2y ago
    On the other hand, understanding what part of what you are doing is due to a leak from the lower layer helps you isolate it in case you should shift what you are building on. And now we have another abstraction! It is rare that you need to understand more than a few layers down, at any given time. As I type on this keyboard, I have no care what the neutrons, protons and electrons are doing in the keys are doing. From time to time maybe if I get a nasty static electric shock I want to stop.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    What are "most of today's challenges"? When I look back over my career, I mostly see increasing levels of abstraction for basically the same set of tasks: here's a database, make a UI to interface with it — sometimes the "database" has been a custom file format or a REST API, but it's still a database. That's not to say there's no other categories of work besides CRUD apps, of course there is, games and document editors are mostly coming up with interesting rules for transforming a state that's fairly easy to display or sonify, and the challenge was one of "make it faster" which often meant throwing away every abstraction above the hardware itself — but even then, before starting my degree I managed to put together a decent raster painting app with just Visual Basic, and I know that code was bad even by the standards I had at the end of the degree. Knowing MVC and MVVM makes it easier to work with system libraries based on those architectures. But why did we ever get things like VIPER? All I had when working with that was stress — what should have taken one person a few days, took a team several weeks. When I've been given free rein to choose the right solution, going with the old one has more than once allowed me, alone, keep up with an entire team doing the same thing some other way on a different platform. Even "just" reactive UI is an abstraction that most of us don't really need — which is why there's even a push for "vanilla" JavaScript. So, what are today's challenges, that current abstractions we need to learn to work with each other are the solution? Or did you mean abstractions such as "I can pretend my keyboard doesn't bounce when considering keypresses" and "I don't need to care about OSI levels 1-6 and barely need to think about level 7"?
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 2y ago
  May explain why some people are great programmers but average coders . . .
ghm2180 2y ago
Did the optimal algorithm for dijkstas shortest path mentioned in the article get used for something immediately consequential and very time sensitive?. My intuition would think routing internet traffic could be a good us case, but I may be wrong.
- nickcw 2y ago
  Dijkstra's algorithm is used in the OSPF routing protocol which used to route traffic around large networks (think ISP internal network, or a large Enterprise).
- _kb 2y ago
  It was part of a tech demo for a research computer, in 1956, intentionally designed to show an easily visualisable problem domain - road connections between cities. That’s over a decade before ARPANET existed. There’s an interview here with more: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1787234.1787249 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1787234.1787249
- mcherm 2y ago
  The article on it [1] says that, "The new result probably won’t have such practical applications, for which there are many considerations beyond theoretical optimality guarantees." [1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientists-establish-the-best-way-to-traverse-a-graph-20241025/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientists-establish...
fredtalty5 2y ago
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lincpa 2y ago
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135 points by lr0 2y ago

It's a nice recap of recent advancements in theoretical computer science (quantum computing, adaptations to Dijkstra's algorithm, busy beavers). Though do note there's many other branches in compsci than theoretical computer science. I would've added "theoretical" in the title and the intro "... Ben Brubaker unpacks what computer science is really about" seems a bit much.

dailykoder 2y ago

>A pithy quote attributed to the pioneering researcher Edsger Dijkstra helps me explain: “Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.” Reminds me of the MIT lecture "Lecture 1A | MIT 6.001 Structure and Interpretation, 1986"[1]. And I still remind myself of that. If you fundamentally understand your problem and solve it, then writing a few characters in your favorite text editor that do the task is easy - [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY

ffsm8 2y ago
That's a good rule of thumb, but you should keep in mind that it's impossible to fundamentally understand most of today's challenges. I'd argue this has kinda lost it's meaning as we kept adding more and more leaky abstractions over the decades, making a fundamental understanding of the whole tech stack and what each layer does impossible. And without these abstractions, you'd struggle to even do a fraction of what today's platforms provide. But yes, the closer you can get to understanding the challenge you're solving, the better you'll likely be able to solve it. With the caveat that this understanding doesn't necessarily let you truly innovate either. It's just a rule of thumb from a time when computers were much less versatile and ubiquitous. Totally off topic from the context of the article though
- lukan 2y ago
  But these abstractions help the developer not solve computer problems, like how to arrange and shift bits in memory, but focus on the actual problem. Only a subset of problems requires the maximum of performance. But I would also argue, there are problems, that require more than a few characters in a text editor, despite understanding them.
- rileymat2 2y ago
  On the other hand, understanding what part of what you are doing is due to a leak from the lower layer helps you isolate it in case you should shift what you are building on. And now we have another abstraction! It is rare that you need to understand more than a few layers down, at any given time. As I type on this keyboard, I have no care what the neutrons, protons and electrons are doing in the keys are doing. From time to time maybe if I get a nasty static electric shock I want to stop.
- ben_w 2y ago
  What are "most of today's challenges"? When I look back over my career, I mostly see increasing levels of abstraction for basically the same set of tasks: here's a database, make a UI to interface with it — sometimes the "database" has been a custom file format or a REST API, but it's still a database. That's not to say there's no other categories of work besides CRUD apps, of course there is, games and document editors are mostly coming up with interesting rules for transforming a state that's fairly easy to display or sonify, and the challenge was one of "make it faster" which often meant throwing away every abstraction above the hardware itself — but even then, before starting my degree I managed to put together a decent raster painting app with just Visual Basic, and I know that code was bad even by the standards I had at the end of the degree. Knowing MVC and MVVM makes it easier to work with system libraries based on those architectures. But why did we ever get things like VIPER? All I had when working with that was stress — what should have taken one person a few days, took a team several weeks. When I've been given free rein to choose the right solution, going with the old one has more than once allowed me, alone, keep up with an entire team doing the same thing some other way on a different platform. Even "just" reactive UI is an abstraction that most of us don't really need — which is why there's even a push for "vanilla" JavaScript. So, what are today's challenges, that current abstractions we need to learn to work with each other are the solution? Or did you mean abstractions such as "I can pretend my keyboard doesn't bounce when considering keypresses" and "I don't need to care about OSI levels 1-6 and barely need to think about level 7"?
6LLvveMx2koXfwn 2y ago
May explain why some people are great programmers but average coders . . .

ghm2180 2y ago

Did the optimal algorithm for dijkstas shortest path mentioned in the article get used for something immediately consequential and very time sensitive?. My intuition would think routing internet traffic could be a good us case, but I may be wrong.

nickcw 2y ago
Dijkstra's algorithm is used in the OSPF routing protocol which used to route traffic around large networks (think ISP internal network, or a large Enterprise).
_kb 2y ago
It was part of a tech demo for a research computer, in 1956, intentionally designed to show an easily visualisable problem domain - road connections between cities. That’s over a decade before ARPANET existed. There’s an interview here with more: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1787234.1787249 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1787234.1787249
mcherm 2y ago
The article on it [1] says that, "The new result probably won’t have such practical applications, for which there are many considerations beyond theoretical optimality guarantees." [1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientists-establish-the-best-way-to-traverse-a-graph-20241025/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientists-establish...

fredtalty5 2y ago

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fredtalty5 2y ago

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lincpa 2y ago

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