[ih] PhD

[Jack Haverty]

Knuth was mandatory during the 60s/70s for anyone interested in
computers.  A great set of books.  But he makes my point -- he recounts
"The *Art* of Computer...", not the Science.

IIRC, Science involves observing something, distilling theories about
underlying principles, and then creating and performing experiments to
validate the theory.   We've been observing Computers and Networks for
50 years, and performing the Internet Experiment almost as long.  I'm
just curious about the results so far....

/Jack
(still waiting for Knuth Volumes 4-7...)

On 1/3/21 1:19 PM, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote:
> well, at least read Knuth.
> v
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 3, 2021 at 3:45 PM Alex McKenzie via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>>  Jack,
>> For networking, I think there are a number of key principles exposed in
>> John Day's book " Patterns in Network Architecture"
>> For Computer Science, I don't know.
>> Cheers,Alex
>>
>>     On Sunday, January 3, 2021, 2:58:31 PM EST, Jack Haverty via
>> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 1/3/21 10:12 AM, Joseph Touch via Internet-history wrote:
>>> It’s less common as a field matures,
>> I think this observation is key -- "Computer Science" is far from being
>> mature.  IMHO, it's still somewhere in the spectrum between Art and
>> Engineering.
>>
>> When I was in grad school at MIT, I remember asking my advisor about
>> investing several more years to get a PhD in the then-new curriculum of
>> Computer Science.    His observation was that PhDs tend to produce
>> experts in some very narrow specialization, and also provide credentials
>> useful for attracting venture capital to found companies.   In contrast,
>> MS work tends to create professionals with much broader interests and
>> ability to explore outside of their academic focus.   I interpreted
>> this: PhDs think and discover scientific principles; MSes build stuff.
>>
>> Since I was most interested in "building stuff that people actually use"
>> (what I told my high school adviser), I took the MS route.   This was
>> apparently pretty common at the time (an immature field).  There's an
>> interesting summary here of the experience at Harvard, and its ties to
>> The Internet:
>>
>> https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2020/09/features-a-science-is-born
>>
>> I've asked the question before, but never gotten any answers -- after
>> 50+ years of Computer Science, what are the top few most important
>> Scientific Principles that have been discovered - analogous to Maxwell's
>> Equations, or Einstein's, etc?  Same question for the subfield of
>> Computer Networking.
>>
>> IMHO, we won't have a Science until we know those Principles that tell
>> us how to use computers in ways that don't require constant updates to
>> fix critical flaws, or enable branches of governments or high school
>> script kiddies to engage in cyberwarfare, or subject all of us to spam,
>> phishing, viruses, identity theft, and other such nasties of computer
>> life today.
>>
>> There's now over 50 years of operational experience with computers and
>> networks.  The "Internet Experiment" continues.   Perhaps some current
>> PhD candidates can extract some Scientific Principles from all that
>> experimentation and tell the next generation of builders how to make
>> things better.
>>
>> /Jack Haverty
>>
>>
>>
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