Ask HN: How much code does a CS PhD write?

4 points by bgar 11y ago ↗ HN

I'm considering going to graduate school to do research in functional programming. It's something that I want to learn at a very deep level, not just practically but theoretically as well. My concern is that as a graduate student I won't write much code. Is this true? If you've done a PhD, how confident did you feel in your overall programming abilities compared to before? I know a lot of theoretical CS is math and formal proofs. How much is implementation, especially in the area of FP/Haskell/type theory?

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slew1 11y ago ↗

Second year student here. I consider a Phd to be "research apprenticeship". You should expect to experience the full life-cycle of research. "Writing code" is only one part of it.

In my case, "writing code" accounts for ~25% of my time. Much more time is spent running experiments, analysing results and publishing.

wmichelin 11y ago ↗

Almost all CS PhD's I know, (mostly all professors), are pretty bad at actual programming, and very skilled in theoretical aspects of computer science.