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aleph_minus_one 1 hours ago [-]
> 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:
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 22 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"...
andrewflnr 1 hours 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.
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.
"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"...
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.