tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068183698747623113.post1058154292687232123..comments2023-10-29T10:40:34.638-04:00Comments on A CS Professor's blog: Deadlines, computer scientists, and showersClaire Mathieuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957755706440077623noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068183698747623113.post-13821972442841548462011-09-27T21:53:57.171-04:002011-09-27T21:53:57.171-04:00Paul, there is also the fact that humans tend to h...Paul, there is also the fact that humans tend to heavily discount future costs. They give priority to their immediate gratification (as was mentioned at some talk I attended just today), and are notoriously bad at taking into account properly future risks due to present behavior. That is a much less satisfactory explanation of procrastination!<br /><br />But I must say that you are at least offering an explanation of why computer scientists behave differently from other scientists. I find it hard to believe, but I don't have a counter-argument coming to mind immediately, and it does propose a conceivable answer to that puzzle!Claire Mathieuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10957755706440077623noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4068183698747623113.post-67961637456911941182011-09-27T10:58:54.284-04:002011-09-27T10:58:54.284-04:00Procrastination is tightly linked with work avoida...Procrastination is tightly linked with work avoidance (as, more directly, are skipping showers and growing beards). I've come to believe that those of us averse towards work make good computer scientists. Which isn't to say we aren't hard workers. We're just more interested in putting the effort in to optimize what we do (and trimming a beard monthly is far less work then staving off stubble daily).<br /><br />But that's what computers are about. Can we automate this? Does this code really need to spend so much time searching through lists? Computational Complexity is core to the field, and in a sense just seeks to delineate when it's worth the effort to find a faster algorithm, and when you should quit now.<br /><br />Same thing in writing large systems. If you don't put lots of effort into figuring out what you can get away without building, you never finish.<br /><br />I picked up regexes originally not because it was good for a computer scientist to know, but because I had a job in highschool involving simple data cleanup, and I knew there had to be a better way than editing huge files by hand.Paulhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11679234404220837033noreply@blogger.com