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Ask HN: Whats the most interesting and exciting field in computer science?

whitef0x 13y ago
Pentesting and security fields that surround it can be pretty interesting. Also working in startups can be exciting with the right company culture and team. However for the most part, the most 'interesting and exciting field' is very subjective and varies from person to person. I think you won't be able to get a definate answer on this because everyone thinks their field is the most interesting (and for good reason too - otherwise they shouldn't be in it!).
primaryobjects 13y ago
Artificial intelligence, currently popular by machine learning. Lots of potential and undiscovered applications. Everyone will have their own opinion on this, however.
- sharmi 13y ago
  It certainly seems to be the case, though the interests seem to be too skewed towards it.
kjs3 13y ago
There's a lot of work to do in parallelism, especially figuring out methods to automatically optimized problems for parallel architectures.
- rotskoff 13y ago
  I agree, but very little of this work seems exciting. While advances like hardware support for transactional memory and, hopefully, some unified memory support for CPU/GPU operations will have a tremendous impact on the ease with which programmers compute in parallel, I tend to hear fewer new ideas about what can be done with parallel computing.
  - kjs3 13y ago
    Exciting is subjective. :-) I don't disagree that there are fewer ideas, but that's because we need new ideas, including new architectures. Having spent quality time on a number of novel supercomputer architectures that seem to have been forgotten in the rush to turn GPUs into short vector SIMD-ish successors to Cray XMP/YMPs, I don't think we've looked at all the viable alternatives, at least not in a long time. For example, I'm clear on why memory-based vectors like the Cyber-205 faded at the time, but it's not clear the same limitations fundamentally still exist (especially with L2/L3 caches bigger than the 205 main store now). I think that's interesting...YMMV.
solomatov 13y ago
I think, the most interesting field now is dependent types. Researches have achieved substantial progress in the last 10 years: * Large mathematical theorems were proved in Coq (Feit Thompson Theorem) * An optimizing C compiler with correctness proof was created (http://compcert.inria.fr/ http://compcert.inria.fr/) If this stuff gets to mainstream and I think, it will get there in 5-10 years, we will have unprecedently reliable and secure systems.
sytelus 13y ago
Deep Learning.

Pentesting and security fields that surround it can be pretty interesting. Also working in startups can be exciting with the right company culture and team. However for the most part, the most 'interesting and exciting field' is very subjective and varies from person to person. I think you won't be able to get a definate answer on this because everyone thinks their field is the most interesting (and for good reason too - otherwise they shouldn't be in it!).

primaryobjects 13y ago

Artificial intelligence, currently popular by machine learning. Lots of potential and undiscovered applications. Everyone will have their own opinion on this, however.

sharmi 13y ago
It certainly seems to be the case, though the interests seem to be too skewed towards it.

kjs3 13y ago

There's a lot of work to do in parallelism, especially figuring out methods to automatically optimized problems for parallel architectures.

rotskoff 13y ago
I agree, but very little of this work seems exciting. While advances like hardware support for transactional memory and, hopefully, some unified memory support for CPU/GPU operations will have a tremendous impact on the ease with which programmers compute in parallel, I tend to hear fewer new ideas about what can be done with parallel computing.
- kjs3 13y ago
  Exciting is subjective. :-) I don't disagree that there are fewer ideas, but that's because we need new ideas, including new architectures. Having spent quality time on a number of novel supercomputer architectures that seem to have been forgotten in the rush to turn GPUs into short vector SIMD-ish successors to Cray XMP/YMPs, I don't think we've looked at all the viable alternatives, at least not in a long time. For example, I'm clear on why memory-based vectors like the Cyber-205 faded at the time, but it's not clear the same limitations fundamentally still exist (especially with L2/L3 caches bigger than the 205 main store now). I think that's interesting...YMMV.

solomatov 13y ago

I think, the most interesting field now is dependent types. Researches have achieved substantial progress in the last 10 years: * Large mathematical theorems were proved in Coq (Feit Thompson Theorem) * An optimizing C compiler with correctness proof was created (http://compcert.inria.fr/ http://compcert.inria.fr/) If this stuff gets to mainstream and I think, it will get there in 5-10 years, we will have unprecedently reliable and secure systems.

sytelus 13y ago

Deep Learning.