About the author
Benjamin Newman
- Major
- Computer Science
- Minors
- Philosophy, Religious Studies
Philosophy statement on Computer Science
«Such is modern computing: everything simple is made too complicated because it’s easy to fiddle with; everything complicated stays complicated because it’s hard to fix.» —Rob Pike
I discovered Computer Science, as opposed to merely computing, through Bell Laboratories, now of Alcatel–Lucent. The documentation for most software now is not about the software itself, but how to use it. The papers I read from the Computing Science Research Center, Unit 1127, were different.
The fortune file for operating system Plan 9 from Bell Labs says, «Center 1127 -- It's not just a job, it's an adventure!». Computer Science is an adventure and it came through even in the technical writing. They were not using computers to solve problems because it was the hip thing to do. They had found a fusion on theory and application.
Computer Science is at its best when it is both theory and application.
—Benjamin Newman, Spring 2011