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Is Computer Science Dead?

Posted by kdawson on from the pining-for-the-fjords dept.

warm sushi writes "An academic at the British Computing Society asks, Is computer science dead? Citing falling student enrollments and improved technology, British academic Neil McBride claims that off-the-shelf solutions are removing much of the demand for high-level development skills: 'As commercial software products have matured, it no longer makes sense for organizations to develop software from scratch. Accounting packages, enterprise resource packages, customer relationship management systems are the order of the day: stable, well-proven and easily available.' Is that quote laughable? Or has the software development industry stabilized to an off-the-self commodity?"

5 of 641 comments (clear)

  1. Fortran dead ? by aepervius · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Fortran is about as dead as scientific research on massive parallel calculation is. Most scientific I know only use Fortran package and certainly not C certainly not Java. Sure the compiler might use f2c or what not, but everything in Quantum Research as far as I know is done using fortran math lib and fortran programs.

    --
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    visit randi.org
  2. A better question by duffbeer703 · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Is traditional Western society dead?

    The west has already ceded manufacturing to Asia. Now we're in the process of exporting that high technology that was the fruit of hundreds of years of western dominance to Asia. Now we have clowns like this person saying that "everything that needs to be invented has been".

    Sounds to me like decline. I guarantee you that Chinese firms aren't talking about shit like this -- they're busy educating hundreds of thousands of people in engineering and sciences while we whine about self-esteem.

    --
    Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
  3. Re:Wow! by jank1887 · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    "Software don't write itself."

    but dupes do? :)

  4. Re:Bingo by jank1887 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    "that doesn't mean that there isn't plenty of good science left to do" Not too mention returning to the study of the equations of motion, basic trajectory analysis, and developing new models explaining the interaction of moderately sized rubber spheres with larger diameter metal hoops. Damn ACC tourney... Go Wahoos!

  5. Re:Wow! by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    OTH, it's the first time I've been down-modded before even being up-modded.

    Looks like I made a cowardly enemy out there somewhere.

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.