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From: peter@yetti.UUCP (Runge)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Re: Re: what's computer science
Message-ID: <260@yetti.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 20-Oct-85 03:20:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: yetti.260
Posted: Sun Oct 20 03:20:58 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Oct-85 08:51:48 EDT
References: <823@dataio.Dataio.UUCP> <6358@duke.UUCP> <827@dataio.Dataio.UUCP> <2392@sunybcs.UUCP>
Organization: York University Computer Science
Lines: 51

> One trouble with theory in computer science is that it doesn't last.  I'd
> estimate that half the theoretical work that's been done in computer science
> is obsolete.
> 
> And another trouble is that theory has not contributed much to computer
> science; it almost always comes after practice.  Had Algol and Pascal
> been failures, theory would have quietly buried the corpses.
> -- 
> Col. G. L. Sicherman

It's nice to see that one can still find entertaining portions of pure
balderdash on the net!  Colonel, it is not the role of theory to "last";
it is to criticize and be criticized and pass away to be replaced by something
better. Had a look at the history of Western science lately? Even in 
purely deductive aspects of mathematics, theories mature, flourish, and
fade into oblivion, as tastes change and new problems are "discovered"
(invented).  As for being "obsolete" (i. e. superseded by something more
effective?), if only half of CS falls into that category, it's doing rather
well -- certainly better than the computer industry where it seems 90-95%
of the tools, products, methods, and concepts being routinely applied are
obsolete.  Compare the "thought" pieces in Computerworld with say, IEEE
Computer, to see what I mean.

And then there are those "failures" Algol, and Pascal! What exactly did they
fail at? As far as I know, both languages succeeded in large part in meeting
the goals of their designers and beyond.

Finally, there is that curious lag between practise and theory in CS -- the
theory comes in after the idea is developed in practise? Even if it were true
in a significant number of instances, that would hardly mean the theory
was irrelevant -- often informal notions worked out in special cases benefit
from a rigorous analysis and generalization: compare arithmetic expressions
in Fortran and functional evaluation in APL or LISP. But actually, I doubt
that the lag goes in that direction anyway, in CS. With a few notable 
exceptions (such as hash-coding), it seems that almost all the "good
stuff" in computing evolved in theoretically-oriented research environments
(often academic), i.e. out of the efforts of people involved in doing
computer science.
Ada! (and what ever happened to Jovial by the way?).
and intellectual insights of DoD's great achievments in this area: Cobol
exactly they failed, Colonel,

*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE ***
-- 

   Peter H. Roosen-Runge, Department of Computer Science, York University
                          Toronto M3J 1P3 , Ontario, Canada
_____________________________________________________________________________
"Eccles, is the ship sinking?"   "Only below the sea."  
"We must try to save the ship -- help me get it into the lifeboat."
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