/sci/ - Science & Math

it's not bad. It's full of bad people who don't belong in it and because of it software both in design and code is degrading and airplanes malfunctioning.

>>11942071
Everyone on this board says that it's a worse degree than even gender studies and lesbian dance theory. I want to know why

>>11942074
for one I know physics students are forced to take it, weirdly most of my physics graduate friends really enjoyed it in contrast to this board.

>>11942091
Is that what leads tk the hate? Though I don't know why that follows into CS being a meme degree

>>11942065
>Why is computer science a meme degree?
Not in the sense that you think of. It's a meme degree because everyone nowadays goes for CS and becomes an engineer. They never did actual computer science but claim that they did cs.

>>11942065
There's two main reasons:
1. CS programs at mediocre state schools in the US (the kind /sci/ usually attends), are filled with genuine retards that think they're gonna score a six figure job straight out of school. And occasionally, they do and that makes /sci/ seethe even more.
2. At top universities, the CS programs tend to have a much higher concentration of talent and better funded programs than other STEM fields, and these kids make 200k+ as new grads (which naturally makes /sci/entists seethe).
3. Pseudointellectual redditors have a lot of trouble learning2code, so /sci/ resents CS students who put the time and effort in and cope by learning obscure math and reassuring themselves that they could totally learn CS in a week if they tried

>>11942100
Wait so CS is actually better than what they do? And they're just seething? That's what I had assumed based on the hype but I thought maybe there was something more
>>11942097
Aren't engineers well payed anyway? So if they became engineers and claim they studied CS, that would improve its reputation

>>11942094
With shit like "everyone should code" people are afraid of pointers, discrete math, recursion, linux, calculus, the terminal, and are even becoming afraid of static typing. So many just want a job.
The dropout for cs is the highest because it gets pushed on people who don't belong in it.
It's a field that requires precision/optimisation and constant autistic basic mathematic repetition for hours, without that you get Boeing’s 737 accident.

>>11942103
>Aren't engineers well payed anyway? So if they became engineers and claim they studied CS, that would improve its reputation
but engineering is not the same as science. CS is a research oriented field. Most cs guys get away without doing any kind of research.

>>11942103
>>11942105
There's nothing wrong with it. But CS is more synonymous with engineering than with science.

>>11942071
>because of it software both in design and code is degrading and airplanes malfunctioning.
These are all business decisions. Software does not have to be tested like hardware does because the money lost isn't nearly as much
Zoom was rewarded for being shit because they got big.if they spent time perfecting their MVP they would have made way less money

>>11942103
>Wait so CS is actually better than what they do?
Market is good right now. CS pays better because there's more money in the tech ecosystem
Has nothing to do with difficulty or prestige

Meh, I just study it for the shekels.

>>11942103
Why do CS people call themselves engineers, the don't have accreditation. They make real engineers look bad, their field can be hijacked by anyone with no degree or training?

>>11943768
Because the industry called it that
There was a time people tried to enforce stricter process in code but that is too slow.
Write now fix later makes more money

>>11942065
People shit on it for a few reasons:
>CS is a really popular major, so math-cels who want to feel special shit on it
>Lots of unis don't separate Software Engineering from CS, leading to a lot of people thinking they're the same thing
>Because of the above confusion, a lot of 'CS' majors are actually just studying SE, making /sci/ think they're what computer scientists are
>A large branch of CS (type theory) is based heavily on category theory and logic (see Curry-Howard Correspondence), which for some reason the math-tards of /sci/ dislike
CS is a fine major - it's one of the few where you can get a degree in a theoretical science and get paid well.

>>11942065
If you can get past the hype, it's actually a really pleasant way to spend your time--except when something goes wrong.

>>11942100

1

>>11942065
>>11942074
Okay.
I'll explain it to you in simple terms.
Imagine going to uni. You pick math because that's your passion. You stave away for four hard years, do everything in your power to end up with a high GPA, and after you graduate you see that there are next to career options available. You could go the traditional route for your major, teaching, but you view teaching high schooler's as beneath you. A consequence of your education is that it has left you with a narcissistic superiority complex. So you go to your only option, graduate school. The end result is more debt and still no career opportunities. But this makes no sense to you. Surely you are intelligent. You majored in math after all. But despite your hard work, despite the years spent on your studies you find your career opportunities to be next to none. The agony, the soul crushing despair begins to weigh you down.

Then you remember Steve. A computer science major. Maybe CS was his passion, maybe it wasn't, but he chose it for financial security. You mocked him for this. You'd laugh at him telling him a math major could do everything he could, in your mind you where superior and he needed to know it. Yet he would just laugh, smile and wish you luck. After graduation, he got a good paying job. He didn't need to worry about grad school, he didn't need to worry about debt piling up, all he needed was his bachelor's degree. Despite your PhD, despite how in your narcissistic brain you should be superior you've come to find out that he leads a far more rewarding career then you ever could.

And this makes you seethe. Oh does it make you seethe. You rage with pure envy as you rave about how superior you are. You refuse to accept reality so in order to cope you begin taunting him and attacking his field in a fit of rage. Your attacks are unsubstantiated but it matters not, they're real in your mind and that's all that matter.
And this is how /sci/ came to be.
Enjoy your stay OP.

>>11945359
fuck. I keked hard

>>11945359
This...now this hits especially hard

>>11945359
>PhD in Math
>any job I want
>500k starting

>>11945359
Kek! Put me in the screenshot

>>11942065
It's a joke of a degree.
You get a watered down education that teaches you how to become a code monkey. You learn no critical thinking whatsoever.
Meanwhile those software jobs prefer math or physics majors so you only screw yourself over by picking CS.

>>11942074
It's not worse than humanities but it's literally code monkey: the degree. It's just training to be a corporate bugman, not an intellectual.

>>11945393
Wrong. btw:
>B.S. in EE
>any job I want
>650k starting
Take the engineering pill mathfag

>>11943903
There’s a large concentration of people here who don’t like mathematics pertaining to foundations. Actually, I think this board has a fetish for analysis and certain subsets of algebra (like Lie theory) because it’s so skewed to think that physics / math in physics > math > math in engineering > all.
>category theory
There are undergrad students who claim to understand mathematics through a rudimentary survey of category theory. The field and its applications are fine - just be sure to study some algebra and some topology before tackling it.

>>11942065
advertising companies and colleges have attracted normies to the field, pajeets with 0 math knowledge are bloated literally everything.
so CS is an absolute meme, doesn't mean that programming/IT/systems are meme tho.

I studied CS and philosophy in college. I went to a "top" liberal arts school in US. So I could talk from that perspective.

The only reason I studied CS was because I was used to spending a lot of time on the computer anyways, financial security, "programming is cooL" I was probably the bottom of my class who graduated in CS and will be starting my "code monkey" job soon. It really is a "code monkey" job, most of the coding will be in SQL and VB.NET. But the pay is good.

I think if mathematicians or physicists tried CS they would enjoy it and do better than me if they really stuck to it. I seriously think that people that really like math and physics are definitely intelligent. But I don't understand why they don't study CS, I think it's just because they enjoy math more? But from my program I noticed that a lot of the kids who LIKED math, or physics, and did CS really really excelled at it. I don't think math is ESSENTIAL to CS, but I don't think you can get by without it. For example, there's Theory of Computation or Algorithms. Besides if you want to do some innovative stuff in CS, you probably need to know math. There is lots of Calculus in Networks, page rank is straight up linear algebra.

There is some sense of the truth in the shitposting about CS degrees, but I think it's where the future is heading anyways. I think programming will become a more blue-collar job, like being a plumber or an electrician. A lot of the rules can be learned by people of average intelligence and like any other field there will be mavericks and people who push it to new levels. So I'm not sure why CS gets this reputation in general? There are people who are shit at math and get math majors, I respect those people for sticking with something that was difficult for them. Not everything in life is easy.

>>11945359
I double majored in both math and CS, made high honors, and took many grad courses in both because math and TCS are my passion. I now make a decent amount in my PhD because TCS lets me study math (yes, also continuous / noncomputable stuff given the body of research on it) with actual funding for research and more than a decent stipend.
This world isn’t split up into math majors who care and CS majors who don’t. Just because the body of average CS students suck doesn’t mean the subject’s bad - in my experience, while the average math student is better, they’re still not excellent (ie they take no big honors sequence in algebra and analysis, few grad courses, little research, struggle with classes barely above the intro analysis level, etc.)

>>11946693

I redact what I said, I think CS is less so about Mathematics and more so about Logic. But I remember reading someone's post about mathematics being good in forming the "way of thinking" that's used in CS, i.e. that logical thinking.

>>11945359
>grad school
>debt
Lmao what? PhD programs are funded and have TAship. You do not pay to do grad school unless you do a
>masters
Which is something for technical knowledge, not research. Also
>traditional route is teaching
>????
The math major is literally part 1 of a research focused program, with grad school being part 2. Why the fuck do so many people on /sci/ push teaching kids arithmetic as the conclusion to a degree that ends off at the level of introducing research level material in topology, analysis, combinatorics, etc etc.?

The natural, traditional route for mathematics majors is graduate school in a funded PhD program.

It's bad because idiots major in it because "muh money". Not that there is anything wrong with wanting money but everyone and their mother is in it now just to make a quick buck and they have watered down the curriculum because people are afraid of mathematics.

Just major in math and learn CS on the side.

>>11946440
>Meanwhile those software jobs prefer math or physics majors so you only screw yourself over by picking CS.
Nah, this is untrue. Math and physics (single major, irrelevant minor) majors take more scrutiny on their resume and literally get mass filtered unless they hit data structures keyword searches on their resume. They get hired - but only after being screened for their background.

The reality is that CS majors from good schools (top 25) get into these jobs. There is a huge difference in quality between average state college software dev lite degree and the actual CS education you get at the best places in the country, and it shows both on the resume and in the interview.
I’ve also yet to meet a good CS major who didn’t also at least minor in math, if not double major. This makes the only-mathfag seethe. I double majored in math and CS, and one of these guys were in my class, and he got visibly upset that I scored dramatically higher on an algebraic topology midterm than he did despite his bragging that he self studied over winter break

>>11946726

What's the difference in majoring in CS because you want money and majoring in math because you "should"?

>>11946693
>I don't think math is ESSENTIAL to CS, but I don't think you can get by without it. For example, there's Theory of Computation or Algorithms. Besides if you want to do some innovative stuff in CS, you probably need to know math.
To do anything nontrivial in CS, especially in theory, requires heavy mathematics, and it’s not exactly all discrete anymore. A lot of the reason it’s heavy is because harmonic analysis, algebra, topology, etc, have showed up.
>>11946704
Mathematical logic, constructivism, and CS are all incredibly closely related, but it’s not that CS is about logic. It’s that CS is so close to the foundations of math that the Rosetta Stone between traditional mathematics and CS theory is all studied on logic. For example, you can talk about measure theory (particularly computable measure) via Brouwer’s constructive school, but you’ll need the motivation from Soare’s Turing Computability book in order to make this relationship.

>>11946726
I have my beef with CS programs, but almost everyone who I’ve talked to who “studied CS on the side” only did basic language bullshit in python, and despite their mathematics knowledge, fail basic interview questions about inductively reasoning on tree structures..
It’s no coincidence this advice that trivializes the task of “learning proper CS” is peddled a lot by the most mediocre math majors. It’s almost like mediocrity exists outside of one’s choice of major

>>11946743

Yeah I agree with you I said as much. But if you just want to have a stable career you don't need to know harmonic analysis, topology, etc. It's great if you know those things.

And on the second point, yeah that's pretty much true. I meant that math isn't ESSENTIAL to CS, in the sense that you don't need to understand the foundations to have a career in it.

>>11945359
The absolute state of CS bugmen. Put me in the screencap

>>11946740
There is no difference really, you can major in whatever you please. I'm just saying that the CS major has been watered down due to schools wanting to push out graduates ( not everywhere but most places) and so I think it effects the quality of the education you might otherwise get in the major. At least in math nobody goes into it for the money in mass so the curriculum has more or less stayed the same. Also, it's really not hard to pick up any CS concept if you know mathematics; most of these people you are competing with may have a "CS" degree but if your smart and can sell yourself in the interview while also having a few projects on thr side you can easily compete with them.

>>11946749
They probably have no ability or discipline to learn then. I have seen some math majors who don't know shit about computers but it sort of surprises me; I guess I'm biased because I have always dabbled in them on the side. If you're a math major worth their salt and can do algebraic topology or analysis or anything else that requires abstract reasoning you should possess the skills to teach your self basic data structures or discrete math problems and programming . The iliterrate of the 21rst century are thper who can't learn to learn.

>>11946764
>I'm just saying that the CS major has been watered down due to schools wanting to push out graduates ( not everywhere but most places) and so I think it effects the quality of the education you might otherwise get in the major.

Do you mean it's been watered down because schools don't want to push out graduates?

>I think it effects the quality of the education you might otherwise get in the major.

I don't think this was true in my school, but it might be true in other places. I think if you're really interested in something and want to challenge yourself more there are routes to do that. There were directed readings or self-studying with professors for example.

>At least in math nobody goes into it for the money in mass so the curriculum has more or less stayed the same.

That's an assumption. Maybe some people study math because they think it'll make them better in CS and make them more desirable as job candidates.

>Also, it's really not hard to pick up any CS concept if you know mathematics; most of these people you are competing with may have a "CS" degree but if your smart and can sell yourself in the interview while also having a few projects on thr side you can easily compete with them.

I think it's about whether you care about learning the subject. One of my friends who was brilliant in Math didn't care about CS. Whether any mathematician can pick up any CS concept could be argued with, but I'd probably just say if you want to learn it you could, I did say in my original post that mathematics is probably great in helping you think about CS concepts, but then again I've never studied math at an intensive level. It's just observations I've seen about people I've shared classes with.

>>11946734
>There is a huge difference in quality between average state college software dev lite degree and the actual CS education you get at the best places in the country
nope, they teach pretty much the same things, have the same type of assignments ect..
what differentiates them are the connections people make there.

>>11942065
cs is much easier than physics, math and traditional engineering. anyone who disagrees has only studied cs, im european so i can get degrees just for the lols and my math degree in a low tier school was much harder than my cs degree in a high tier school

>>11946798

I think I agree with this more. I don't want to be elitist in believing that the quality of education you get at a "top 25" school is objectively better. I know that there are great state schools to study CS or other subjects at. But sometimes the same reasons "top" students go to "top" universities is because "top" professors want to teach at those "top" universities. And I guess top universities also have a lot more resources so they can shell out more money in every aspect, ya know

Pure CS is a meme, but scientific computing is based. You're forced to pick up the important parts of computer science while working on cool shit that can't be solved with pen and paper.

>>11946754
I would say those careers are more in software than in CS. CS careers involve either academia or industry, and it's almost always research.
>>11946764
>Also, it's really not hard to pick up any CS concept if you know mathematics
Depends on what you qualify as a "CS concept." If we're talking about watered down bullshit then absolutely, but the issue is that many math majors do as described in >>11946749.
>At least in math nobody goes into it for the money
I agree with this, but the implication means they're chasing their passion or that they're good at it - a lot of them are not. A good amount of math majors end up just wanting an undergrad degree with a CS minor and getting a job somewhere.
So yes, the math curriculum is good (I double majored in math and CS, and I like to think my CS program wasn't watered down) but the curriculum alone does not push out good students. There's a huge amount of stratification between the actual good ones and the ones who are just there.

Isn't the expectation in tech that an employee self teaches themselves what they need to know.
Why would the quality of their education factor in?

>>11946872
>scientific computing is based
this screams "i'm either an engineering or physics student and wowowoow numerical methods wowooww fourier split step wowowow solving stuff with non analytic solutions wowow"
>the important parts of computer science
lmao imagine believing that numerical methods was the most salient part of CS.
Shitposting aside, scientific computing is pretty cool but pure CS (ie theory, algorithms, interdisciplinary theory, etc.) is important in a way that can't be understated

>>11946887
tech and software engineering isn't CS

>>11946886
I'm not saying numerics are relevant to CS, or even a part of it. Numerics is in the domain of maths. What i meant by it is basically the things that go into making your computations fast.

>>11946879
ah i see desu i wasn't even thinking about the difference between computer science and software engineering then everything you said is probably right with math being essential if it's for academia and research

>>11945359
HOLY
FUCKING
BASED

>>11946886
Only E.E. matters. Make circuits, code is for faggots.

>>11947061
>EE is circuits hurr
>CS is code hurr
this post was made by an early undergrad