Ask HN: Any one else think it's a strange time to be a computer scientist?
Having looked into our fields' history -- most of the real exciting stuff (new) happened in the 60s, 70s and 80s. I'm not the only one but many other prominent members of our field also express that nothing new has been done for ~30 years. Some really exciting stuff I have come aware of: Timesharing, the internet, Smalltalk, Lisp, designing hardware for software, different methods of programming, tools to enhance our understanding of science.
At first enthused about browser/server web applications (using rails framework) -- I find completely dull, and now feel to constrained by the browser and the server interaction. Working with squeak I find I just want my computer too be squeak and build off that.
(caveat: graduated 4 years ago)
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[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 38.4 ms ] thread1. You'll drive yourself mad.
2. You'll start to appreciate the Right Thing.
I'm a self-taught programmer which means that I don't feel qualified to answer the cs questions, nevertheless, I think I can answer your question.
First, thinking that "the new stuff" is the same as the exciting stuff is wrong. The exciting stuff is the stuff that excites you and not necessarily the new stuff. For example, the principles behind the modern web apps aren't exactly new (client/server, CRUD), and yet, you had a love affair with rails :)
Second, there are two kinds of "the new stuff". The first kind is the stuff that's a new development in cs, the second kind is the stuff that's new to you. If you focus on the second kind you'll see that there's a whole new world out there waiting to be explored and conquered. Scratch that, there are worlds upon worlds of potentially exciting stuff waiting for your attention.
My advice is to keep looking.
I'm actually pretty stoked about the state of things right now though. Ubiquitous compute power through virtualization, big data (map reduce!), open cv, machine learning, SAT solvers, you name it. Now that we have cheap, plentiful and fast computational power all that stuff they dreamed about back in the 60s and 70s is now a reality.
CS as a discipline is nowhere near tapped out. Sure, we're probably not going to find too many more core algorithms in many of the various disciplines, but come on.. we don't even have true general purpose AI at this point!
http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/jmitesh/Mitesh_Jain_files/draft....
http://theoryofcomputing.org/articles/gs001/gs001.pdf
Plenty of amazing results in the last few years.
On the timescale of human endeavor, those ideas, like the idea of computer science itself, are all new. But even though old on a relative scale, there is nothing wrong with pursuing an interest in them - lambda calculus, information theory, etc. don't rust as they age. Indeed, what makes many of those computer science ideas interesting is that they are still applicable and relevant today.
If the former, read Bram Cohen's paper on BitTorrent. A lot of academics were working on the peer to peer buzzword right after Napster came out. Bram's work shook that little corner of academia IMHO. Academics regained their footing with the horde of DHT papers that followed ala Chord, Pastry, etc. I think Cassandra uses these ideas.