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#compsci

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davidbau.com Does Computer Science Still Exist?

https://davidbau.com/archives/2026/03/20/does_computer_science_still_exist.html
But my NetHack experience suggests something different. The skills that matter at scale are somehow still about programming, but they are not coding skills. They are: deciding what to build. Figuring out what to test and how to know if the tests are honest. Building tools that make invisible things visible. Managing coordination across agents. Knowing when a metric is a figleaf. Recognizing where the real complexity lives in a system, and routing attention there instead of everywhere else. These are the conceptual skills that have always been underneath large-scale programming. They are the hard part that the mechanical craft obscured. The reality is that CS has never really been about writing code. Underneath coding is critical thinking about algorithms, engineering principles, analytical methods. It is the science of managing complexity, and code is just the medium we manage it in. In the era of AI code generation, the field does not die. It transforms.
#ai #career #codegen #compsci #llms
archive.org #38420

LLMs Can Get "Brain Rot"!

https://llm-brain-rot.github.io/
We propose and test the LLM Brain Rot Hypothesis: continual exposure to junk web text induces lasting cognitive decline in large language models (LLMs). To causally isolate data quality, we run controlled experiments on real Twitter/X corpora, constructing junk and reversely controlled datasets via two orthogonal operationalizations: M1 (engagement degree) and M2 (semantic quality), with matched token scale and training operations across conditions.
#ai #compsci #genai #llms
archive.org #37864

Phrase origin: Why do we "call" functions? – Arthur O'Dwyer – Stuff mostly about C++

https://quuxplusone.github.io/blog/2025/04/04/etymology-of-call/
On StackExchange, someone asks why programmers talk about “calling” a function. Several possible allusions spring to mind: Calling a function is like calling on a friend — we go, we stay a while, we come back. Calling a function is like calling for a servant — a summoning to perform a task. Calling a function is like making a phone call — we ask a question and get an answer from outside ourselves. The true answer seems to be the middle one — “calling” as in “calling up, summoning” — but indirectly, originating in the notion of “calling for” a subroutine out of a library of subroutines in the same way that we’d “call for” a book out of a closed-stack library of books.
#compsci #history #programming
archive.org #29455

I don't have time to learn React - Keith Cirkel

https://www.keithcirkel.co.uk/i-dont-have-time-to-learn-react/
When I mentor early career developers and they ask me what they should learn, I can't say React, they don't have time. I mean sure, pick up enough React to land you the inevitable job doing it, but it's not going to level up your career. Anyone with $5,000-$10,000 can make their way through a bootcamp and scrape their way through an interview, but it's a competitive market and it's usually quite evident when your interviewing a bootcamp candidate. Stand out by picking up some more fundamentals
#compsci #react #web #webdev
archive.org #29829

Big-O Algorithm Complexity Cheat Sheet (Know Thy Complexities!) @ericdrowell

https://www.bigocheatsheet.com/
Hi there! This webpage covers the space and time Big-O complexities of common algorithms used in Computer Science. When preparing for technical interviews in the past, I found myself spending hours crawling the internet putting together the best, average, and worst case complexities for search and sorting algorithms so that I wouldn't be stumped when asked about them. Over the last few years, I've interviewed at several Silicon Valley startups, and also some bigger companies, like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and Uber, and each time that I prepared for an interview, I thought to myself "Why hasn't someone created a nice Big-O cheat sheet?". So, to save all of you fine folks a ton of time, I went ahead and created one. Enjoy! - Eric
#bigo #compsci
archive.org #29849

parnas-1979.pdf

https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse503/08wi/parnas-1979.pdf
Designing software to be extensible and easily contracted is discussed as a special case of design for change. A number of ways that extension and contraction problems manifest themselves in current software are explained.
#compsci #software
archive.org #29936

Before You Can Have Smalltalk, You Must First Defeat Capitalism. — Matthew Gaudet

https://www.mgaudet.ca/blog/2024/10/28/before-you-can-have-smalltalk-you-must-first-defeat-capitalism
The title of this blog post is at least a little sarcastic, but I think is an honest to goodness truth: If you want to build a future that involves beautiful systems like Smalltalk, you must first rebuild the economic environment wherein it could be built. Wherein it could succeed! These systems idealized in lamentations at SPLASH all seem to me to be products of economic surplus combined with the right people. We need an economy that has surpluses around for people to do explorations.
#compsci #economy #programming #smalltalk
archive.org #29942

AI Winter Is Coming

https://leehanchung.github.io/blogs/2024/09/20/ai-winter/
This is how we’re headed for another AI winter, just as we saw with the fall of data science, crypto, and the modern data stack. And that’s actually a good thing. The promoters will hop onto the next trendy buzzword, while the real producers will keep moving forward, building a more capable future for AI.
#ai #compsci #ml
archive.org #30438

a blog by biggiemac42

https://btm.qva.mybluehost.me/building-arbitrary-life-patterns-in-15-gliders/
Select any pattern that can be built in Life – for example, the Waterbear. Begin with a small number of gliders (now 15) in an otherwise empty Game of Life universe. After enough time goes by, those gliders need to build that pattern. No extra leftover debris, no stray scaffolding, just a pure synthesis of whatever you chose.
#compsci #conway #imported:pinboard #life #math
archive.org #30607

a blog by biggiemac42

https://btm.qva.mybluehost.me/building-arbitrary-life-patterns-in-15-gliders
Select any pattern that can be built in Life – for example, the Waterbear. Begin with a small number of gliders (now 15) in an otherwise empty Game of Life universe. After enough time goes by, those gliders need to build that pattern. No extra leftover debris, no stray scaffolding, just a pure synthesis of whatever you chose.
#compsci #conway #life #math
archive.org #29348

Liskov substitution principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liskov_substitution_principle
Substitutability is a principle in object-oriented programming. It states that, in a computer program, if S is a subtype of T, then objects of type T may be replaced with objects of type S (i.e., objects of type S may be substituted for objects of type T) without altering any of the desirable properties of that program (correctness, task performed, etc.).
#apis #compsci #design #gluecon #imported:pinboard #liskov #oop #programming #software
archive.org #23654

Boston College Campus Police: "Using Prompt Commands" May Be a Sign of Criminal Activity | Electronic Frontier Foundation

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/boston-college-prompt-commands-are-suspicious
"During its March 30th search, police seized (among other things) the computer science major's computers, storage drives, cell phone, iPod Touch, flash drives, digital camera, and Ubuntu Linux CD. None of these items have been returned. He has been suspended from his job pending the investigation. His personal documents and information are in the hands of the state police who continue to examine it without probable cause, searching for evidence to support unsupportable criminal allegations."
#compsci #eff #police #rights
archive.org #12144

Time Travel and Computing

http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1991/TempComp.html
"Let's suppose that eventually some approach results in a practical, even cheap, way to package time machines to make negative time delay elements --which output signals that predict what their inputs will receive some fixed time later."
#compsci #timetravel
archive.org #4643

Carly's Way

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/03/wo/wo_delio030405.asp?p=2
"To me, this rabid fixation on short-term profits is a bigger threat than outsourcing -- it is killing our ability to make astonishing things."
#compsci #future
archive.org #4260

Beginners Mind

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BeginnersMind=
"By understanding patterns the architect is not doomed to repeat them; she will recombine and transcend them, and in the process create new patterns for those who come next"
#compsci
archive.org #4205

The Python Paradox

http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html
"And people don't learn Python because it will get them a job; they learn it because they genuinely like to program and aren't satisfied with the languages they already know."
#compsci #java #python
archive.org #3088

Doug Engelbart 1968 Demo

http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html
"On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS,
#compsci
archive.org #2805

J.C.R. Licklider

http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/licklider.html
"Much like Vannevar Bush, J.C.R. Licklider's contribution to the development of the Internet consists of ideas not inventions."
#compsci
archive.org #2267

The Importance of Fudgability

http://www.kasei.com/archives/000791.html
"We believed that we could spend a couple of days watching trained lawyers perform a highly-skilled job, talk briefly to them, and then make their jobs completely obsolete."
#compsci
archive.org #2145