Vint Cerf on Internet Challenges

chamilto0516 writes "Phil Windley, a nationally recognized expert in using information technology, drove up to the Univ. of Utah recently hear this years Organick Lecture by Vint Cerf, one of the inventors of the Internet. In his notes, Vint talks about, 'Where is the Science in CS?' He also goes on to talk about real potential trouble spots with the Internet, but there is a bit on Interplanetary Internet (IPN). Apparently, the flow control mechanism of TCP doesn't work well when the latency goes to 40 minutes."

Comments

Where is the "science" in CS

[jgold03]

I think people generally don't understand what computer science is. CS isn't a 4 year degree to learn how to program or set up a network. It's about having the theoretical background to be able to analyze and evaluate comptuter technologies. Classes like automata theory and theoretical data structure classes are necessary to be able to both 1) apply a real solution to a problem and 2) be able to argue the validity of that solution. There is a lot of science in CS.

Re:Software Quality

[tsotha]

It is rather amazing that there appears to be a consensus among industry experts that there has not been any improvement in code quality over the past 30 years or so despite the development of a vast number of new tools and languages.

I've always assumed this was a variation of "In my day, we had to walk 10 miles through the snow just to get the mail..." I've been in this business for 18 years or so, and while I don't think the actual code is any more clever than it used to be, the expectation in terms of time-to-market and quality have definitely changed.

When I started slinging code you could release business software with no GUI and still compete. You could release software that didn't "play nice" with other applications. You could require users to load special drivers and put arcane commands in their OS configuration. There is simply a larger set of features that have become mandatory, i.e., things you have to have to pass the laugh-test. You may call it bloat, but the fact is I can't remember the last time I cracked a manual - my expectation is the sofware is lousy if I can't install and operate it without a manual.

I don't see the quality changing any time soon. You can never completely test a non-trivial application, and finding those last couple of esoteric bugs incur an enormous cost. Would you really be willing to pay double the price for, say, MS Office if they removed half the remaining bugs? I wouldn't, especially if I can work around the problems.