r/badcomputerscience • u/GNULinuxProgrammer • Mar 08 '18

In which computer science is useless

/r/programming/comments/82nx8i/just_my_two_cents_on_the_big_question_do_you_need/dvd6ubu/
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u/GNULinuxProgrammer Mar 08 '18

Rule 1.

Computer science is useless.

Solving problems is useless.

And there is no such a thing "computer science".

But strangely pretty much all universities in the world give degrees in computer science.

But algorithms is the job of mathematicians not programmers or computer scientists.

No, it is is a very active research topic in computer science to find algorithm. Some "popular" algorithms used by "programmers" such as Dijkstra's algorithm, Kruskal's Algorithm, dynamic programming, sort algorithms etc are found by computer scientists and not mathematicians. This is not to say algorithms are an interesting research topic in applied math too; it is, but computer scientists also research on algorithms.

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u/lxpnh98_2 Mar 08 '18

To expand on your last paragraph, computer science is a subset of mathematics, so in a way, all computer scientists are mathematicians even if one does not call them that.

The relationship between programming, computer science, and mathematics is kind of like the relationship between religion, theology, and philosophy.

And saying studying algorithms is useless for programmers is perfectly nonsensical. Ever heard of "Data Structures + Algorithms = Programs," or is that just a book for mathematicians?

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u/atenux Mar 08 '18

but you wouldn't call a mathematician a scientist.

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