What are academic computer scientists good for? That depends.
Those who practice 'theoretical' computer scence examine and compare
algorithms and on occasion devise new ones. They are really mathematicians
who work with abstract formulations of real computing problems. High
quality work of this kind can be, often has been, enormously useful; and
even mediocre work of this kind is almost always benign.
The work of other academic computer scientists, those for example who
concern themselves with programming problems and programming languages, is
seldom in my view so benign. With a few conspicuous exceptions, their own
programs are mediocre; and they are almost always prisoners of the moment's
ideologies ands hot topics.
These things said, undergraduate CS training and even a CS Ph.D. usually
equip people with valuable skills.
There is, moreover, room for many more than one sort of programmer in the
world. I have, for example, a colleague who is an ex-operator and ex-IBM CE
and who is also one of the ablest and most productive programmers I know.
Moreover, he has learned some mathematics too: 'big O' and 'little o' hold
no terrors for him, and he can deploy them confidently to analyze the
performance of a routine or (instantiation of) an algorithm.
The operation of separating the sheep from the goats, while possible, is not
easy; and the possession or non-possession of some credential is unlikely to
be very helpful in distinguishing them.
John Gilmore
Ashland, MA 01721-1817
USA
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