I used to be one of those people who came into a CS undergrad program, complaining about the barrage of math we had to learn and the very little detailed real-world programming we had to do. However, after having taken PL, automata, crypto, algorithms and AI, I see the point of having concrete rigor of proof and abstraction about your code. However, what the author says about CS being a badly managed field, by being a mix-bag of math and science rings true to me.
For instance, I have found out when I was a student sysadmin for my school, one of my CS professor who does research in typed-system does not know Perl. It behooves me that someone involved in CS, particularly research of programming languages, do not have a fundamental understanding of the practical application of their field. Someone earlier pointed out Church-Turing thesis being completely useless at the time of their publication, the same argument could be made for the Crick-Watson DNA publication (in their original publication, Watson only suggested that DNA being a double-helix). But the difference between these truly remarkable scientific discoveries with the average Joe academic pumping out crap each year, is that these theories were even then, foreseeable to have impact.
No, I don't buy the "oh, theory is an art; let the academics work for knowledge's sake." Recent advances in technology are as much driven by industry as much by academia, see Bioinformatics (Celera), see high performance computing (Aerospace companies), see AI/data-mining (Spam Bayesian filters, Amazon, Netflix).
I read recently a quote that declared "form is liberating" - just as architects are forced to design their pieces by both the constraints of material and economics; I would rather design my software and theory in the domain of application.
For instance, I have found out when I was a student sysadmin for my school, one of my CS professor who does research in typed-system does not know Perl. It behooves me that someone involved in CS, particularly research of programming languages, do not have a fundamental understanding of the practical application of their field. Someone earlier pointed out Church-Turing thesis being completely useless at the time of their publication, the same argument could be made for the Crick-Watson DNA publication (in their original publication, Watson only suggested that DNA being a double-helix). But the difference between these truly remarkable scientific discoveries with the average Joe academic pumping out crap each year, is that these theories were even then, foreseeable to have impact.
No, I don't buy the "oh, theory is an art; let the academics work for knowledge's sake." Recent advances in technology are as much driven by industry as much by academia, see Bioinformatics (Celera), see high performance computing (Aerospace companies), see AI/data-mining (Spam Bayesian filters, Amazon, Netflix).
I read recently a quote that declared "form is liberating" - just as architects are forced to design their pieces by both the constraints of material and economics; I would rather design my software and theory in the domain of application.