On Fri, 14 Apr 2000, Susannah Rosenberg wrote:
> not to open up another can of worms, but what would you consider
> developing a new OS to be -- MIS or CS? I'm not talking re-engineering
> the Unix kernel (<grin>), I mean designing a new OS architechture from
> scratch -- sort of like the folks at Bell tried to do with Plan 9.
In terms of developing new ideas, it can go either way. I've noticed for
the past 5 years as a student that CS doesn't necessarily need you to
learn an API or program unless it'll help you understand a concept. My
perception on MIS is an actual implementation and use of them in every day
goals.
Unless the new OS will incorporate break through ideas in managing a file
system or provide a better answer to the classic consumer/producer problem
in process management or something along those lines, then what's the
point of both CS and/or MIS reinventing the wheel? ;) From what I know
about Plan9, isn't it just a rehash of SysV Unix? Or was it supposed to
provide something new to the market?
> I've always thought some of the problems with CS was
> theory-without-application. Granted, I've no interested in writing YADB
> (Yet Another Database), but at some point CS people should be putting
> "pen to paper", so to speak. Consider that the two greatest contributors
> to the field of computing as a whole (in my not so humble opinion) were
> bastions of industry -- Bell Labs and Xerox PARC. How theoretical do you
> mean?
>
> IMHO, if you don't touch on practical issues at least 50% of the time,
> what you're doing isn't CS, it's math (eg: Edsger Djikstra. grr.)
>
> Agree totally on the theory stuff, but it's interesting to see how
> different people define "Computer Science"
Theory has been applied to a lot of things in the industry, maybe not in
the terms of which we think it should serve its purpose.
Note, that Bell Labs and Xerox PARC are both research laboratories in
their day, it wasn't until people used the ideas developed did it come out
into the light. IMO, I think the entire difference between CS and MIS is
that MIS actually use the theories from CS for practical purposes.
Beverly
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