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Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview

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1798 points jerryX | 1 comments | 30 Nov 18 05:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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jules ◴[30 Nov 18 09:50 UTC] No.18567950[source]▶
If your country has "democratic" in the name it's probably not democratic. If your major has "science" in the name it's probably not science. If your company has "don't be evil" in its motto...
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armada651 ◴[30 Nov 18 11:32 UTC] No.18568339[source]▶
So Computer Science is Engineering?
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gambler ◴[30 Nov 18 14:55 UTC] No.18569484[source]▶
It's a thing of its own. Used to be called informatics in some countries. Much better name, IMO. There are large parts of computer science that have nothing to do with computers. They're about information and can be applied outside of computers.

I'm with Alan Kay when he says "computer science" used to be an aspiration and eventually became a misnomer. Same with software engineering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyIQKBzIuBY

(Doesn't mean CS and SE are always "worse" than science and engineering. But they are currently very different.)

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taco_emoji ◴[30 Nov 18 15:40 UTC] No.18569836[source]▶
"We need to do away with the myth that computer science is about computers. Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, biology is about microscopes or chemistry is about beakers and test tubes. Science is not about tools, it is about how we use them and what we find out when we do."

- Michael R. Fellows, Ian Parberry (1993) "SIGACT trying to get children excited about CS"

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1. taoistextremist ◴[30 Nov 18 16:49 UTC] No.18570375[source]▶
Unfortunately, virtually all CS programs have become Software Engineering programs save for their names. The actually thinking and theory behind it is often more of a side note as educational institutions focus on teaching students how to use specific tools that are popular at the time, leading to many people having a good idea of these specific tools, but no idea on their actual design implications or how anybody actually realized how to do these things.

Sadly, if you want to learn proper theory (what I consider to be CS) you have to get lucky and find a mathematics program that has electives so you can focus on things like discrete mathematics and information theory.