this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
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As a computer person... algorithm design is extremely fascinating and while I think it's silly that my BS says "computer science" there definitely is a real field of computer scientists and it's awesome. Most of us are just really well practiced code monkeys though.
I have two friends who are studying or have studied computer science and I have nothing but respect for what they do. It's a rapidly growing and very versatile field
To clarify, are they actually doing research or just CS degree havers? Most of us folks with CS degrees don't work in a research capacity (even if we're working with interesting business problems).
Being able to factor algorithms like algebraic equations is really neat.
I've never been able to wrap my head around proofs of algorithms, but I love the idea.
One of the best authorities on that concept is Djikstra - they actually formally proved a few full algorithms and also provided a lot of guidance on how to prove others. It's not something you'll see... well, probably ever... but it's a very interesting approach to program design. Dijkstra imagined a world where all programmers would be writing formal proofs of correctness before authoring a single line of code... that's a neat world, I'd love to see it... but it's also incredibly burdensome so our tech explosion would likely be happening a lot slower.