[sdiy] Help for a budding young engineer...

[Thomas Strathmann]

Am 8/11/10 19:34 , schrieb Olivier Gillet:
> Actually, logic was part of the same class (automata ->  turing
> machines ->  combinators ->  lambda calculus ->  curry howard isomorphism
> <- formal logic) - it's hard to draw a border between these topics.

Actually it's not hard at all and is normally done. From the description 
of the course it's not really an automata theory and formal languages 
course, but rather one about models of computation. Very useful, 
especially the lambda calculus and Curry-Howard part.

> I don't really believe in the categorization of things into EE/CS --
> actually, the place where I studied never made the distinction and
> allowed students to float between the two areas. There are far too
> many important problems at the frontier of the two - Is speech
> recognition an EE or CS problem? What about formal verification and
> synthesis of digital circuit? Embedded software development? Digital
> communications?

There are many topics that are either CS or EE, the course you mentioned 
being a good example. If things get technical and circuits are involved 
the lines are blurred, but in the more practical (e.g. databases or 
distributed systems) or theoretical (e.g. Petri nets, complexity theory) 
only in some cases the applications might be related to EE. It's sort of 
an Anglo-Saxon thing to view CS as more related to EE whereas in Europe 
people tend to emphasize the relation to mathematics. There are always 
exception to this "rule".

> Indeed, seeking a learning environment in which it's possible to
> escape this dichotomy might be a good thing.

Agreed. That possibility was an important factor in my decision. In some 
cases it might even be useful to have cooperations with biology, 
psychology, neuro science, and so on (speech recognition for instance).

	Thomas