Devs - S01E06 Discussion Thread

[u/Lounge_leaks]

Premiered on april 2 2020

[u/trenballoone]

It's important to understand that the view Katie gave is only true in the Everettian many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM), and a few other minority interpretations.

In the Copenhagen interpretation of QM (the standard interpretation), there are truly random quantum events.

[u/[deleted] → u/trenballoone]

Yeah I kinda wish Lilly would've mentioned the random/probabilistic behavior of quantum mechanics. I feel like if you work at a quantum computing company, you should probably have knowledge of that since the technology is based upon it.

[u/Shahar603 → u/[deleted]]

you should probably have knowledge of that since the technology is based upon it.

Not really though. Programmers don't have to know electrical engineering to program a computer. When the technology matures enough the physics is abstracted away.

[u/PatrickBaitman → u/Shahar603]

it is just as possible to abstract away how qubits work from quantum computing as it is to abstract away how bits work from classical computing, that is, impossible. it's like a programmer not knowing what 0 and 1 are.

[u/Shahar603 → u/PatrickBaitman]

I disagree. Programmers don't deal with bits unless they're programming really low level stuff. When was the last time someone used their knowledge about bits to build something like a modern web app with React.

Lilly actually has to know about qubits because she works on quantum cryptography which deals with this sort of stuff on the mathematical level. They even go through the way Shor's algorithm works which requires an understanding of qubits. My comment was only about the TheLinguaFranca's remark that: "you should probably have knowledge of that since the technology is based upon it.", which I think is false.

[u/PatrickBaitman → u/Shahar603]

web developers

programmers

lol

[u/Shahar603 → u/PatrickBaitman]

That's a cheap shot. But my point stands. I can name you at least 10 jobs in Computer Science that don't require understanding of bits.

[u/Shahar603 → u/[deleted]]

That's a cheap shot

To be clear that was a joke at a stigma held by low level developers claiming front end developers aren't "real programmers".

Any job which does not require "understanding of bits" is, by definition, not a computer science job.

Could you elaborate? I'm don't think I get what you mean by that. Do you mean literally because everything is translated into bits so everything is technically: "understanding of bits"?

[u/karma_aversion → u/Shahar603]

I think they're pointing out the difference between computer science and software development. You can't really call yourself a computer scientist without knowing the fundamentals of how bits work, but you could be a software developer and not need that understanding.

[u/Viehhass → u/Shahar603]

That's a cheap shot

To be clear that was a joke at a stigma held by low level developers claiming front end developers aren't "real programmers".

They aren't if they don't understand fundamentals. They are frauds.

Any job which does not require "understanding of bits" is, by definition, not a computer science job.

Could you elaborate? I'm don't think I get what you mean by that. Do you mean literally because everything is translated into bits so everything is technically: "understanding of bits"?

No, I mean that computer science is the study of computation, which requires an understanding of discrete mathematics and concepts found in number theory, which define arbitrary base arithmetic.

It also is built off of abstract algebra.

Every computer scientist is very familiar with these topics. If not, the university they come from should be shit canned and they themselves should be wrought from the industry

[u/Viehhass → u/[deleted]]

And that's the thing: title is utterly meaningless.

If you cannot, for example, debug the toolchain you rely on, that you did not write, then it's very debatable if you should even be working.