random vaguely CS-related thoughts

I feel like going off on a coding/CS major ramble...


1. Why am I a CS major? I don't actually enjoy coding *that* much, the drive is more in the building and problem-solving aspect. Did you play with Legos as a kid? I don't know about you, but once I finished building something i'd use my imagination for a little bit, like reeanacting a space battle, and then i'd smash it to little bits and rebuild another spaceship. I'd reuse little bits of the old spaceship that I thought were cool, That's actually distressingly similar to software development, all developers love the first time they code something, and try to maintain it for a bit, and then they get some bright new idea that requires rewriting everything but reusing core parts of the old code. And so I find myself doing the same thing at Rescomp, only I'm programming instead of building lego spaceships.

2. I don't know what people outside CS perceive it as. It's all just making stuff work, in the end. In fact, I will bet you that if you can write a good essay, you can be a good programmer - it shows that your thoughts are organized and can be directed somewhere. After all, if you ramble on and on aimlessly and confuse your readers in English, god help you with Perl. Hey...no wonder soft majors are bad at coding...

3. There is no such thing as software engineering. Can you engineer an essay? Well, then you sure as heck can't engineer an operating system. An essay is never really done. You give it to as many people to read as you can, hope they can catch mistakes, proofread it over and over, but no matter what you do there's going to be a valid counterargument to your claims. If one doesn't exist, you wrote a trivial essay that doesn't actually do or say anything of value. Same with coding. You write, test, debug, test some more, debug some more, release, realize you made a huge boneheaded error that passed all the testing somehow, repeat over and over...There have been bugs in the Unix codebase that have been hidden for 33 years. You'll never be done. You can engineer a bridge because you do things like mathematically model stresses and material strengths, and prove your fault tolerances. How do you model "user clicks a link, app retrieves info from database"? In the end it's all just trial and error, and trial and error != engineering.

4. Being in CS doesn't make you not have a life. I have enough free time to go out to the gym, party on weekends, and have an hour or two to myself every day. I just choose to waste it doing retarded shit like playing dota for three hours straight or watching ESPN. And that seems to be the type of thing my fellow CS majors like to do in their free time. And when you're surrounded by bastards like these, you quickly assimilate. I actually have a theory as to why this major attracts loners with no social skills...it's because computers are the one thing that allow you to actually do something without having to interact with people face-to-face. I mean, you *could* read a book, but nobody's gonna pay you for that. Sit in a cubicle, code for an hour or so at a time, chitchat with co-workers about code (a safe, no social awkwardness possible topic) - this sort of dreary existence appeals to a lot of the sleepyheads in my classes.

5. last one. I am not one of those people in #4. I can sit at the computer for 5 hours straight sometimes, but at some point I need to get the fuck away and talk to someone. Maybe I should uninstall AIM so I'll actually interact with people physically more often. Instant messaging is so unrealistic - you can plan out all your thoughts. Anyone can be a smartass on the internet, as long as wikipedia isn't lagging.

6. JK. bonus point. Women cannot do comedy. Girls can make you laugh if they do something ridiculously cute or stupid, or if they tickle your balls while stro- wait, wrong blog. But never in my life have I beheld female comedic wit. I'm pretty sure it's a guy thing. No wonder 4chan is full of funny. EL OH EL!