CS specialisation

[Anonymous No.10640548]

are databases interesting field in CS to specialise? Do you like math behind it? Is it profitable? What about OOP programming?

[Anonymous No.10640563]

AI or security which one do you dislike the least?

[Anonymous No.10640565]

how good are you at math?

[Anonymous No.10640572]

>>10640565
what do you mean? Isnt databases just set theory?

[Anonymous No.10640573]

>>10640548
>are databases interesting field in CS to specialise
I think they're an absolute bore
>Do you like math behind it
Relational theory and basic set theory are alright, but I can't help but feel like they're the rudiments of more interesting topics in the same fields.

Now if we're talking about querying online (as in, online algorithms where you cannot analyze the most effective strategy a priori and have a series of promises to keep), that's way more interesting, but that's more combinatorial theory on cache structures.
>Is it profitable
Probably to some extent
>What about OOP programming
What about it? If you go the developer route, no single paradigm is profitable. You have to be able to use a lot of things in conjunction

t. TCS student, more into physics + CS than coding jobs

[Anonymous No.10640589]

>>10640573
> I think they're an absolute bore
Agreed but being a DBA is one of the highest paying CS jobs you can have outside of ML or similar.

Doing the more theoretical work on databases and queries is very niche and I can't say it's got good career prospects.

[Anonymous No.10640593]

>>10640589
Right..but that doesn't really change the fact that it's incredibly boring. I mean, if you want the extra +40k go ahead, but exactly what is the worth of money when your base salary is already high enough for upper middle class? The extra money from that job won't exactly break you into the highest class, and you'll be incredibly dissatisfied. At this point, you really should pick something you enjoy

[Anonymous No.10640601]

>>10640593
>>10640573
why do you think its boring? Do you need to write a lot of technical reports or something?

[Anonymous No.10640605]

>>10640601
It takes a certain mindset and skillset to be a good DBA. It's a combination of system administration, platform monitoring and assisting developers with query optimization. If you want to be a developer it's a boring job. If you are a sysadmin it's one of the most challenging applications and needs specialized staff.

[Anonymous No.10640611]

>>10640601
This post (>>10640605) was not me (>>10640573). I think it's boring because conceptually, it's fairly simple. All the work comes in the engineering considerations of making such a system scale efficiently and service clients. So you have to work on robustness, redundancy, modularity, ACID promises in a distributed system, etc etc. All of that is important work that needs to be done, but I personally find it to be more like doing chores than pursuing an interesting career.

Speaking of >>10640605
sysadmin-ing is more IT with a flavor of systems CS, but I wouldn't put it in with CS proper. The upkeep, maintenance, understanding of such systems, etc., is important, but that's not really CS, just like how development isn't really CS proper either, but it uses the very basics of the basics.

[Anonymous No.10640614]

Nothing that you need to use or administer or design databases is interesting and all the discourse around it is pajeet tier copy pasting. There's some interesting stuff in implementations and optimising them, particularly with the newschool OLAP stuff but anything 99% of people will actually do is not interesting.

Good money but extremely business oriented. I hated every second of it.

[Anonymous No.10640627]

>>10640614
Literally this. Thank you.
I didn't know how to articulate it, but it's so business-y that it gave me really bad vibes, and that was only during an internship. It made me realize I like math and science way more than anything that has to interface with industry business etiquette

[Anonymous No.10640751]

>>10640565
Why would a background in mathematics be matter?

[Anonymous No.10641774]

>>10640751
>>10640627
>>10640614
>>10640611
>>10640605
>>10640601
>>10640593
>>10640589
>>10640573
>>10640572
>>10640565
>>10640563
>>10640548

ALL OF YOU ARE FUCKING IDIOTS HOLY FUCKING SHIT SQL HAS EQUIVALENT EXPRESSIVE POWER AS FIRST ORDER LOGIC, LOOK IT UP. CATEGORY THEORY HAS HEAVY TIE INS TO FUNCTIONAL LANGUAGES SUCH AS HASKELL. MANY IMPORTANT PROBLEMS IN MATHEMATICS MAY BE REDUCED TO PROBLEMS OF COMPUTABILITY. BRAINLETS, THE LOT OF YOU. FUCK THIS PLACE.

[Anonymous No.10641777]

>>10641774
>SQL HAS EQUIVALENT EXPRESSIVE POWER AS FIRST ORDER LOGIC

NOt taking a $3000 class in formal logic so you can write select statements at your computer janitor job

[Anonymous No.10641904]

>>10641774
based schizoposter

[Anonymous No.10641936]

>>10640548
>are databases interesting field in CS to specialise?
No, it's literally the most boring field in CS.
>Do you like math behind it?
No, only relational algebra and database noramlization are and they're high school tier and only require naive set theory, also fun fact: I've met people interested in the filed and the think normalization math is "too hard" lmao, the field is full of pajeets.

[Anonymous No.10642017]

>>10641774
I never claimed it didn't. I claimed that everything about database theory makes me want to study its parent subjects more. Pure complexity / computability is way more my jam.

>Same expressive power
It doesn't really help me in reductions, so I don't really give a shit about it.

[Anonymous No.10642056]

>>10640573
>Absolute bore
You should look into distributed databases, especially in stuff like fault tolerance and distributed mutual exclusion.
That shit's real cool

[Anonymous No.10642066]

>>10641777
Not that anon, but our school gave out a tenure position to someone who basically did an asic design for SQL operations to sequence genes.
So there are cool things you can do with SQL

[Anonymous No.10642068]

>IT guy's face when I show him how I've set up the entire database for my project in an excel sheet

Fun fact you can query excel with MSSQL

[Anonymous No.10642144]

>>10642017
That sounds something more related to Distributed Systems/Computing than Databases.

[Anonymous No.10642146]

>>10642056
That sounds something more related to Distributed Systems/Computing than Databases.

[Anonymous No.10642509]

>>10640589
>Agreed but being a DBA is one of the highest paying CS jobs you can have outside of ML or similar.
Wait what.
I thought it was one of the lowest paying?
How much is the average pay? Any sources?