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| author | mjkwiatkowski <mati.rewa@gmail.com> | 2025-12-21 12:06:52 +0100 |
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| committer | mjkwiatkowski <mati.rewa@gmail.com> | 2025-12-21 12:06:52 +0100 |
| commit | 87370a6c7d891a30d6a50ed66ac98feda5a63817 (patch) | |
| tree | 8d2654ca3ab3e77bf52358ff7f21bcb45f8bb047 /public/posts/studying-computer-science/index.html | |
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diff --git a/public/posts/studying-computer-science/index.html b/public/posts/studying-computer-science/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e4dd70c --- /dev/null +++ b/public/posts/studying-computer-science/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,91 @@ +<head><script src="/livereload.js?mindelay=10&v=2&port=1313&path=livereload" data-no-instant defer></script> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="32x32" href="/images/favicon-32x32.png"> + <link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="16x16" href="/images/favicon-16x16.png"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/images/site.webmanifest"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/style.css" /> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/fonts.css" /> +</head> + +<div class="container"> + <ul id="bar"> + + + <li> + <a href="/">home</a> + </li> + <li>|</li> + + + <li> + <a href="mailto:mati.rewa@gmail.com">mati.rewa@gmail.com</a> + </li> + <li>|</li> + <li> + <a href="https://git.denounce.ai/">git.denounce.ai</a> + </li> + <li> + | + </li> + <li> + <a href="https://ohmyghost.nl">ohmyghost.nl</a> + </li> + <li> + | + </li> + <li> + <a href="https://atlarge-research.com/mkwiatkowski/">research</a> + </li> + <li> + | + </li> + <li> + book blog + </li> +</ul> + + +</div> +</div> +<div class="container"> + <p>It has long lingered on my mind to reflect partially on my experience of the last 3 years. +The B.Sc. of Computer Science I have recently undertaken is soon coming to an end. +Fortunately, this is not the end of my journey as a Computer Scientist, but there are specific things that I did not realize about Computer Science before I embarked on this endeavour. +Here’s one that has been bugging me the most: Computer Science is 90% reading and understanding and 10% coding.</p> +<p>With the proliferation of the so called “vibe-coding” and use of generative AI to streamline production of code this might seem like a medieval thought at first, but bear with me, as I believe it to be the most important thing I have learned about Computer Science in the last 3 years.</p> +<p>Dealing with complex problems is hard. +Programming is all about solving problems, we programmers live by optimizing our code the best we can, and try to find solutions to problems that we encounter while doing so. +While it is no doubt nice to have a working code that does something cool, or a solution to a problem that meets the specification, I don’t think that is the mindset a programmer should have – that is, to solve a problem is not about getting to a solution somehow.</p> +<p>Solving coding tasks requires time. +This might be difficult to admit for some, as it has been for me. +But understanding a problem requires patient reading and digesting the context, possible solutions and most importantly doubts. +On top of this, if you have solved a problem without asking questions about it, then it wasn’t a difficult (by proxy important) problem to be solve in the first place.</p> +<p>Reading code is hard. +It’s sometimes like reading an essay in a foreign language. +Your head hurts, your eyes are getting sore, and after 6 hours at staring at the screen you conclude you don’t understand anything anymore. +It would almost seem like this time has been wasted, since you might have not produced a line of code. +Nevertheless, this is all there is to programming.</p> +<p>After 3 years, it appears to me that the views about Computer Science as a disciple of Donald Knuth and Edsger Dijkstra seem the most correct. +I had first stumbled on Donald Knuth’s blog long ago, when exploring Jamie Zawinski’s blog and looking for top figures in CS to study. +On his <a href="https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html">blog</a> Knuth writes: “What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don’t have time for such study.” +There it is. +Computing takes time. +There’s no silver bullet yet, and we as programmers have to take our time to think about problems in depth. +There have been many comments on the peculiar style of teaching and way of being of Edsgar Dijkstra, but I believe he has made some really good points. +I greatly encourage you to watch his Turing Award lecture. +Nevertheless, what describes my experience over the last 3 years is his quote: “The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full humility[…]”. +I think this the approach to take, and certainly one that I will take on my future escapes to the CS world. +So often computers help us verify and point out that we indeed really don’t know anything, we are just pretending we do.</p> + +</div> +<footer> + <center> + + © Copyright 2024-2025 Mateusz J. Kwiatkowski. All Rights Reserved. + + </center> +</footer> +</body> +</html> + |