How to Insult a Computer Scientist

Another insult against a theorist:<p>"Interesting, I'm from industry and this appears very applicable to some of the work we're doing right now."

Cue one highly ranked HN news item with no news, nothing about startups, nothing specific to hacking, no real information, and nothing that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.<p>Yup - I'm "that guy" and today I'm a grumpy old man. This item is just noise.<p>ADDED IN EDIT: And yes, I expected to be downvoted, because anything that smacks of criticism of the community gets downvoted. People don't like to be told that they're doing something wrong, especially people who are so damned sure they're right, or clever, or talented, or hardworking.<p>Yes, the very nature of an entrepreneur is to follow things through in the face of adversity, but when you're criticised you need to stop and see if there's some truth - to see if there's something you should learn.<p>Before you downvote this comment, ask yourself why? Does this submission as a whole really add value to the site? If it does, then my criticism doesn't, and rightly should be downvoted.<p>But if this item adds no real value to the site then my criticism is valid and should at least make you pause before looking for an arrow to click.<p>And if you <i>do</i> downvote, then a reasoned response would add value. But maybe you really are just looking for cheap entertainment. Replying - adding value to the site - would be, you know, like, work.

The insult-backfiring section reminds me of some interesting experiences as an AI researcher, with a slight secret penchant (as many of us have) for robot domination. When a humanities or social-science researcher starts talking about "technological determinism", "machinic tyranny", "sapping of human agency by machine", the "instrumental society", and similar, the AI researcher sits, trying hard to suppress a smile, thinking, "yes, yes, PLEASE do go on!".

When I worked in CS research the sure fire way of making the Prof I worked for incandescent with rage was for someone from industry to start a comment with "In the real world...".

Easier ways:<p>1) When he/she says they are a computer scientist, say "oh so you're like an IT guy? Because I recently got this virus..."<p>2) Call him a mouse jockey

For some context (odd that it's not included in the essay itself), this is an essay by Douglas Comer from January 2009 -- according to the HTTP header, at least, which I'm inclined to trust given the system. If that name's familiar but you're not sure why, he wrote <i>Internetworking with TCP/IP</i>.

Wow, from 2 years ago: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=436058" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=436058</a><p>The comments back then were.. different somehow.

Doesnt this set up an oversimplified theoretical separation over the admittedly simple but continuous spectrum of research and corresponding insults??

That people working in the area of compilers are experimentalists explains a <i>lot</i> about compiler theory.

Q. What's the difference between 'theory' and 'practice'?<p>A. In theory, there is no difference.

&#62; You can try to attack both parts simultaneously:<p>&#62; I note that the <i>systems</i> aspect of this project seems quite <i>complex</i>. Do you think the cause of the convoluted implementation can be attributed to the more-or-less ``<i>simplistic</i>'' <i>mathematical</i> analysis you used?"<p>This has to be my favorite one :)

Purdue's CS Department is legendary in its archaic theoreticalness (if there's such a word, but would be a nice insult, I think). So much so, it seems, to produce a lot of funny commentary. For another popular example from proggit: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/gcgv8/all_hope_abandon_ye_who_enter_here/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/gcgv8/all_hope_...</a>

Comebacks:<p>Despite all the equations, it seems to me that your work didn't require any real mathematical sophistication. Did I miss something?<p>Yes.<p>----<p>Isn't this just a straightforward extension of an old result by Hartmanis?<p>Which one?<p>----<p>Am I missing something here? Can you identify any deep mathematical content in this work?<p>Yes you are. Next question.<p>----<p>Wasn't all this done years ago at Xerox PARC?<p>No, only several of the underlying technologies. Can you identify which?<p>----<p>Have you tested this on the chip Intel got running last week in their lab?<p>No, but I'm sure it will work because I helped design it.<p>----<p>Am I missing something? Isn't it obvious that there's a bottleneck in the system that prevents scaling to arbitrary size?<p>Did you miss that function isDebugOn(){ return false; } is O(1)?

It seems that the author is a theorist, not a practitioner, as his theorist insults ("Despite all the equations, it seems to me that your work didn't require any real mathematical sophistication. Did I miss something?") are much better than his experimentalist insults ("Wasn't all this done years ago at Xerox PARC?")<p>If you want to insult an experimentalist, it's there's a much more cutting one - "Didn't Microsoft do something similar when they were working on CORBA?".

If I write code that needs to be performant, and I do it by using an efficient algorithm, analyzing it's complexity and use Big-O notation, I'm automatically a theorist?<p>That's hilarious.

So you work in IT? - works on me just fine.

Comment by a French computer scientist: "Well, of course it will work in practice, but will it work in theory?"

I just finished a class with Prof. Comer. He is hands down the <i>best</i> instructor I've ever had. He has a very down to earth method of teaching &#38; personality for that matter.

Related: Things to Say When You're Losing a Technical Argument <a href="http://www.pigdog.org/auto/mr_bads_list/shortcolumn/1914.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.pigdog.org/auto/mr_bads_list/shortcolumn/1914.htm...</a><p>There are some interesting points in that list, some can be used against theorists, others can be used against experimentalists.<p>(I'm not sure if that article has been ever submitted to HN)

My boyfriend just graduated with a PhD in computer science, and his mother sent a congratulatory email to him (with me in CC) saying "Congratulations on your PhD in IT!"<p>Much good-natured jibing was had after that. :)

I can see that your work contains much that is new and good however the new is not good and the good, not new.<p>A paper on this work would be illuminating if ignited.<p>Congratulations: You have now once again successfully solved one of the one star exercises in Knuth's TACP.<p>In this work, is your coauthor a professor, post-doc, Ph.D. student, Master's student, undergraduate, or a visitor from a middle school?<p>So, your new programming language is Turing Machine equivalent. Okay. Beyond that its main feature is that it 'encourages a programming style' you prefer. Just why is that 'style' more significant than, say, style in the rag trade?<p>Your work has used some theorems from math but has it added any theorems to math?