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Completely agree. The fact is that most people in STEM aren't so much encouraged to go into STEM as deceived into it by a combination of science documentaries,
by partition 15y ago
Completely agree. The fact is that most people in STEM aren't so much encouraged to go into STEM as deceived into it by a combination of science documentaries, science types bragging that STEM-like subjects are of Superior Intrinsic Value and Lead You To The Meaning Of Life, and parents selling the field to their children as an easy way to make money.
And a very good point about the hacker/elite snobs pissing on other classmates + gender imbalance and lousy social environment, it's not just limited to CS undergrads but is widespread in Ph. D programs as well, you'd expect that these Head Nerd types would have gotten with the program of life by then.
Combine the shitty social elements with a shitty ROI plus an increased awareness of other kinds of worth than being a coding rockstar, and you've got a bunch of disillusioned, not-very-young people who feel they have been deceived into making their life choices.
The last point is also what's making me reconsider being involved in computer science. It seems like even research universities are increasingly doing work that are more low-quality first-startup style grabs at attention, using machine learning (itself a balkanized field devoid of theory) as a semantic stopsign-marker of objective quality, and less of "classical" computer science results that were very mathematically informed.
- rayiner 15y ago> It seems like even research universities are increasingly doing work that are more low-quality first-startup style grabs at attention, using machine learning (itself a balkanized field devoid of theory) as a semantic stopsign-marker of objective quality, and less of "classical" computer science results that were very mathematically informed. I disagree with this. Much of the product of computer science departments these days is mathematical gibberish. Pages of proofs written by extremely poor writers with nary a point in sight. The heyday of computer science, in contrast, involved academics working on interesting problems and publishing readable work that was accessible to practitioners. For example, the papers that came out Rice's Scaler Compiler Group in the early 1990s are a model of clarity and good taste in academic writing.
- partition 15y agoI think we actually agree. I too feel that computer science these days is gibberish relying on the form but not substance of mathematical proofs to convey superior status, whereas "why" systems worked back then didn't require mathemtical _gibberish_ to explain, but were actually very well rooted in mathematical reasoning.
- pnathan 15y agoAs I edit my thesis, I am observing the sad state of my own technical writing ability. Can you point me to a paper you find clear and in good taste?
- rayiner 15y agoI think Preston Brigg's PhD thesis is great: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~mckinley/380C/lecs/briggs-thesis-1992.pdf http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~mckinley/380C/lecs/briggs-thesis-1... This is also great: http://hall.org.ua/halls/wizzard/pdf/Vaughan.Pratt.TDOP.pdf http://hall.org.ua/halls/wizzard/pdf/Vaughan.Pratt.TDOP.pdf
- fluidcruft 15y agoYou should try being a male in neuroscience. Ugh. Women are petty gossips.