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You are simply conflating CS with programming, which is very commonplace. Programming is the craft/art skill of manipulating digital code and data. Within prog

You are simply conflating CS with programming, which is very commonplace. Programming is the craft/art skill of manipulating digital code and data. Within programming you can learn about specific domains - for web apps that would mean databases, networking, a host of standard formats and protocols, and user interfaces. Many commercial programmers go their entire career focused only within one or two domains. Computer science is the academic study of computation. As the rigorous curricula of today would have it, it is a more mathy endeavor than programming by itself. In particular there is a focus on provability and formality that doesn't come up in commercial programming. Basically, stuff you learn in CS won't help you ship the ideal mix of features, stability, and time cost for (insert app here). What it will tell you is about a variety of methods with which you may approach the underlying computation problems and direct your own original research efforts.

likpok 18y ago
Furthermore, a formal understanding of computation will give you a good intuition of what things are "good" or "bad" techniques (algorithmically), what kinds of things are computable/not, etc. This can be advantageous (you know things like DP and more formalized algorithms) but most of it is far above what you will ever need to do (probably. Certain areas use more high-level things)
cperciva 18y ago
In particular there is a focus on provability and formality that doesn't come up in commercial programming. I'd call tarsnap commercial, but it has involved proofs and formality. Right now I'm writing a paper which proves some properties about the efficient computability of functions -- because showing that these functions cannot be efficiently computed makes it possible to rely on them for security purposes. Sure, tarsnap is unusual in the amount of cryptographic research behind it, but most interesting applications do something new at least.
krakensden 18y ago
That's also... not an answer to the question. Still, given a CS major and no experience applying math to practical matters, how valuable is that to someone looking for new hires?

likpok 18y ago

Furthermore, a formal understanding of computation will give you a good intuition of what things are "good" or "bad" techniques (algorithmically), what kinds of things are computable/not, etc. This can be advantageous (you know things like DP and more formalized algorithms) but most of it is far above what you will ever need to do (probably. Certain areas use more high-level things)

cperciva 18y ago

In particular there is a focus on provability and formality that doesn't come up in commercial programming. I'd call tarsnap commercial, but it has involved proofs and formality. Right now I'm writing a paper which proves some properties about the efficient computability of functions -- because showing that these functions cannot be efficiently computed makes it possible to rely on them for security purposes. Sure, tarsnap is unusual in the amount of cryptographic research behind it, but most interesting applications do something new at least.

krakensden 18y ago

That's also... not an answer to the question. Still, given a CS major and no experience applying math to practical matters, how valuable is that to someone looking for new hires?