Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rice!titan.rice.edu!preston From: preston@titan.rice.edu (Preston Briggs) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: religion and computer science Message-ID: <10133@brazos.Rice.edu> Date: 23 Jul 90 03:22:56 GMT References: <1990Jul21.004616.649@Stardent.COM> <388@e2big.mko.dec.com> Sender: root@rice.edu Organization: Rice University, Houston Lines: 38 This has certainly been an inflammatory little topic, so I'll be brief. Programming isn't computer science. Topics like indentation, mnemonic variable names, implementation language, favorite editor, ... are all programming. Pretty low-level and boring (like asking a good lawyer what brand of pen he uses). Computer science does have "hard" (as in non-fuzzy) topics such as decidability, complexity, and algorithms. This is the basic knowledge Karsh alluded to and is comparable to knowledge of Maxwell's equations or whatever. I expect most schools offer these topics at one level or another. There are also religious issues. For example, I believe in RISC. I believe that a straightforward 1st pass, followed by a few general-purpose optimizations, and global register allocation is the way to build a compiler. These are things I believe despite lack of proof. They were revealed to me by the prophet John Cocke and his disciples Cooper, Kennedy, and Torczon. Religious issues are also taught in school. I think (believe!) they should be. When confronted by hard choices and incomplete information, I'm curious about how others have approached the problem, particularly people with lots of experience. I look to my teachers for guidance. Naturally, this applies to program indentation, languages, et cetera. It's perhaps unfortunate that many people graduate with an inverted view, thinking perhaps that "algorithms" is advanced elective, suitable only for theoreticians and that "real" CS types take assembler instead. -- Preston Briggs looking for the great leap forward preston@titan.rice.edu