What is innovation? - you can be coding monkey without a PHD - sure. If you like it then don't get a PHD. But where has the real innovation come from?
The transistor? Nuclear weapons? Drugs that save your ass? What other technology came out of Bell Labs?
The real innovation in our society is done for the most part by people with PHD's. Amazon.com, eBay - these are small innovations compared to the above. The groundwork was laid by the PHD's creating the underlying technology.
Slashdot Mirror
In the same way that the other sciences are reproducible physical experiments mathematics consists of reproducible mental experiments.
Proofs give you the steps to reproduce the experiment.
To that end math tells us as much about the human mind (what is considered beautifull or elegant in mathematics?) as it does about the universe.
http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~avb/micromathematics/downloads
Many tasks are more or less language neutral. For those it's nice to choose a single multipurpose language (like say python).
When you need something specialized you deal with it on a case by case basis.
It clearly benefits code reuse and reduces bugs to have a small rather then large number of languages.
Boris
What is innovation? - you can be coding monkey without a PHD - sure. If you like it then don't get a PHD. But where has the real innovation come from?
The transistor? Nuclear weapons? Drugs that save your ass? What other technology came out of Bell Labs?
The real innovation in our society is done for the most part by people with PHD's. Amazon.com, eBay - these are small innovations compared to the above. The groundwork was laid by the PHD's creating the underlying technology.
Boris