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From: g-rh@cca.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Re: CS degrees, are they useful?
Message-ID: <6451@cca.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 1-Mar-86 01:22:34 EST
Article-I.D.: cca.6451
Posted: Sat Mar  1 01:22:34 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Mar-86 07:37:26 EST
References: <6350@cca.UUCP> <6420@cca.UUCP> <>
Reply-To: g-rh@cca.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Organization: Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge
Lines: 43
Summary: 

In article <> ladkin@kestrel.ARPA (Peter Ladkin) writes:
>
>(ladkin - non-numerical curriculum)
>> >Propositional and predicate calculus, complexity
>> >theory (concrete and asymptotic), graph theory, combinatorics,
>> >some universal algebra (plus a bit of groups, rings and fields
>> >for concreteness), Boolean algebra, relational algebra, model
>> >theory, theory of computation, theory of formal languages,
>> >recursion theory (Turing machines, recursive functions),
>> >lambda calculus and denotational semantics.
>
>(harter)
>> [.... expressions of doubt of value .....]
>
>I'm glad you asked........I claim that all of the above topics
>are needed to a greater or lesser extent by *applications*.
>(That filtered my choice of examples).
>It really is true that yesterday's theory is today's application.
>It's also true that an undergraduate doesn't need *much*
>of these, but then an ug doesn't need *much* of any one thing.
>I'll include the list in a separate posting.
>

You're probably right.  I have a bias because all of my work has
been done in procedural languages -- FORTRAN, PL/I, ALGOL, C, JOVIAL,
and sundry assembly languages.  I have never worked in Lisp or Prolog.
The problem with procedural languages as a class is that they put
blinkers on your thinking.  One's view of how to do things is filtered
through the types of things that can be easily done in the language
being used.  There are applications (AI, par exemplar) where procedural
languages are the wrong choice because the fundamental paradigm of the
language does not fit the application.

It is probably also true that the undergraduate in either CS or SE
should get some understanding of the nature of computers and of
computation in general.  Actually this is more of a matter of
culture rather than career preparation.  If your knowledge of the
field you are working in is narrow and technical you are at the
mercy of changes in the nature of the field.  It is advisable to
also to have the broad background so that changes in paradigms can
be put in perspective.

	Richard Harter, SMDS Inc.