Computer scientists today are in the position of economists in the early 2000s

Computer scientists today are in the position of economists in the early 2000s(statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu)

7 points by jreynar 4 hours ago | 4 comments

> Computer scientists currently have a lot of prestige. [...] Now I’d say that computer science today is like economics at the beginning of the century or Freudian psychiatry in the 1950s in being at apex academic and social prestige and influence. Computer scientists, or computer-science-associated businessmen, are the new gurus, in a way that wasn’t the case before. Yes, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were culture heroes back in the 80s and 90s, but nobody was particularly interested in what they had to say outside of their narrow technological realms. Nowadays, many computer scientists and tech lords present themselves, and are often taken as, all-purpose pundits. (Many of the tech lords are actually tech investors; they’ve absorbed the prestige of information science through the transitive property of money.) As with the economists and Freudians of past eras, they are presented as having some special authority derived in part from their almost inhuman hyper-rationality, a willingness to tell uncomfortable truths.

This is an insanely US-centric perspective. In Germany, being a programmer is more like what is described in the song "Code Monkey" by Jonathan Coulton:

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

Update: Just to be clear: there exist tides when programmers are more vs less tolerated (during the dot-com bubble, the tolerance for programmers was larger), but programmers were always very far from the apex of any "prestige" (whatever you associate with this term) hierarchy.

drillsteps5 43 minutes ago |

Most "computer scientists" are not scientists. They are engineers. They engineer (build) something abstract, software, but that doesn't make them scientists.

"Computer scientists" do exist, they create theoretical underpinnings of the hardware and software that millions of engineers then use to create things, but majority of people working in IT are engineers.

Now, don't get me started on "data scientists"...

dieselgate 8 minutes ago | |

Now do UX Researchers.

It's just a label on a box to put people in. I don't really know what "science" or "engineering" is anymore--my SO is a neuroscience phd and has maintained "science is not synonymous with the scientific method; a lot of 'research' science is just collecting and publishing data and it does not need to be reproducible" which makes enough sense but challenges a lot of my priors.

Engineers don't traditionally even "build" anything and there are both upper-case and lower-case engineers in title and legal designation.

Comparatively and in sum the distinction between computer scientist and programmer is actually somewhat simple and quaint.

aleph_minus_one 21 minutes ago | |

> Most "computer scientists" are not scientists. They are engineers. They engineer (build) something abstract, software, but that doesn't make them scientists.

Engineering is also a scientific discipline; there is a reason why in German the umbrella term for all engineering disciplines is "Ingenieurwissenschaften".

While physics is about finding the laws that govern nature, engineering (say, mechanical or electrical engineering) is about accepting these laws as foundation, and using these laws to build or improve things. This is not less scientific than physics; (classic) engineers are just experts in a special, more applied sub-discipline of physics.

Similarly, software engineering is about applying the foundations that mathematics, electrical engineering or computer science brought in a similar scientific way.

On the other hand, many people who call themselves "software engineers" don't apply rigorous principles based on the mentioned foundations in a scientific way. Such people are not engineers, but scammers, and should be named this way. :-(

> Now, don't get me started on "data scientists"...

Data science is actually a serious science. It was based on the observation that statistics is just one part of the whole data workflow, so we need people who have a good knowledge about all of the phases of this workflow.

On the other hand, many people who call themselves "data scientists" are rather scammers, and should be named this way. :-(

andrewflnr 1 hour ago |

> Computer scientists, or computer-science-associated businessmen, are the new gurus,

This is a dangerous conflation. It's a conflation that society is currently making, and we should note that, but we should not make the same mistake when analyzing it. "Computer scientists", e.g. people who care about the craft, and computer business people tend to have opposing goals with regard to privacy, software distribution, etc.