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  • Hazel Weaklyhazelweakly@hachyderm.io
    Dec 24, 2025, 12:42 PM

    The two hardest problems in Computer Science are

    1. Human communication
    2. Getting people in tech to believe that human communication is important

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  • nadjadequbed@mastodon.chaosfield.at
    Dec 24, 2025, 1:16 PM

    @hazelweakly The third hardest is I presume then to get people in tech to understand that 90% of all ‘technical’ problems are instead socio-political ones and that neither political nor social problems have technical solutions?

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  • nadjadequbed@mastodon.chaosfield.at
    Dec 24, 2025, 1:34 PM

    @slothrop @hazelweakly and both parts of that. Tech people are *just* plumbers and bricklayers. They help build infrastructure but they're no better than a bricklayer building a bridge.

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  • Kat SKatS@chaosfem.tw
    Dec 24, 2025, 2:01 PM

    @dequbed @slothrop @hazelweakly ...which leads to looking back at the bridges you've built, and hoping they've been used more by good people to do good things, than by any other kind. But also being afraid to look.

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  • derptroncrazyeddie@mastodon.social
    Dec 24, 2025, 3:47 PM

    @dequbed @slothrop @hazelweakly We are engineers and scientists.

    Fuck the haters. ;)

    Ain't nothing wrong with being a plumber. The equivalent in IT would probably be the network administrators. Similar levels of education and certification requirements. The plumber is probably more regulated by law, but the expectations are similar.

    I really don't understand the human obsession with labeling wide groups of other humans and then group hating on them. It's weird. We're just people.

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  • Alexnap@social.coop
    Dec 24, 2025, 11:05 PM

    @crazyeddie @dequbed @slothrop @hazelweakly

    They're not saying there is something wrong with being a plumber or a bricklayer. Those are both artisanal professions that build infrastructure, whereas the average software engineer is trained to view themselves more as a capitalist. Of course, we aren't. We are also members of a largely artisanal profession.

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  • iweiniwein@mas.to
    Dec 25, 2025, 12:08 PM

    @nap @crazyeddie @dequbed @slothrop @hazelweakly i did a double take at "*just* plumbers" as well. (Pretty sure not intended negatively in this case, but could be more positively worded, I think)

    Given the right incentives, both plumbers and software engineers can do some very useful stuff, and solve some hairy problems. Also, I met some of the best and most compassionate communicators among craftspeople. Let's celebrate that and let go of the stereotypes!

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  • Marco van Burgsteden 🍋Marrekoo@urbanists.social
    Dec 26, 2025, 10:19 PM

    @slothrop

    Plumbers and bricklayers do essential work. The problem with managing sociotechnical systems through the tech/engineering lens is that the ultimate societal goals tend to get lost as the job becomes less and less prioritised by politics and social issues, but more and more by technical optimisations of the system.

    So tech ppl need to either start condidering the ethics of choices they make, and involve sociopolitical stakeholders more.

    @dequbed @hazelweakly

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  • Pseudo Nympseudonym@mastodon.online
    Dec 24, 2025, 5:02 PM

    @hazelweakly

    I thought the two hardest computer science problems were:

    1) naming things
    2) cache invalidation
    3) off by one errors

    (To be clear, I fully agree with the "communication" point. Just couldn't pass up the set up for a joke.)

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  • deliveratordeliverator@infosec.exchange
    Dec 24, 2025, 6:11 PM

    @hazelweakly I fully admit to HATING the mandatory "arts" courses (English lit, sociology, history, etc) I had to do as part of my uni degree. If I were doing it now I would probably have chatgpt'ed my way through most of the essay writing. Which is what I worry is happening with the next generation 😬

    I'm at the point in life/career where I realize these were actually really useful.

    how do we actually illustrate the value of these subjects to future generations? For me I know part of the issue was time management - trying to focus on reading a book and reflecting on it while also juggling all the "engineering" course work. Separate them into their own year/semester?

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  • Daniel Reedersonekind@beige.party
    Dec 26, 2025, 3:28 AM

    @skry 90% of the responses on this thread exhibit common flaws with binary thinking, e.g. 'those are hard problems for other disciplines too!'

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  • skryskry@mastodon.social
    Dec 26, 2025, 8:44 AM

    @onekind Binary thinking is so often the elephant in the room. I feel like we need hazard signs in the hallways of tech companies. It’s almost as if duality were a deeper assumption constantly slamming our minds shut.

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  • Daniel Reedersonekind@beige.party
    Dec 26, 2025, 9:11 AM

    @skry I mean, yes, it straightforwardly is that and we've known that since the Enlightenment.

    But I think you might be using the term binary to mean Manichean instead.

    With binary thinking you get binary logic and an enormous array of different positions and claims become possible via the operators techies all treat as second nature — AND, OR, NOT, XOR, etc. The state model is only dualistic if you take it at a single time point and don't relate it to anything else. The moment you do either of those things, you get incredibly complex and diverse possibilities as an emergent property.

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  • skryskry@mastodon.social
    Dec 26, 2025, 7:26 PM

    @onekind I’m using “binary thinking” to mean “it’s either on or off; 1 or 0; A or B”. I was implying that some people are dualism all the way down.

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  • Neil MoffattNicelyManifest@mastodon.social
    Dec 24, 2025, 6:20 PM

    @hazelweakly Does not help that many are like myself - Aspergic - and that the inside-code and outside-application views and logistics are so often massively different. Tiny user change can take forever ...

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  • Harry W.hazz223@mstdn.social
    Dec 24, 2025, 6:32 PM

    @hazelweakly something ironic about tech enabling such fast commutation, while really sucking at using it appropriately / at all 😅

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  • craignicolcraignicol@glasgow.social
    Dec 24, 2025, 10:44 PM

    @hazelweakly see also: the most important language to know in computer science is your own native tongue. (Or whatever your organisation uses to communicate)

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  • BlueTeamSherpa :verified:Blueteamsherpa@infosec.exchange
    Dec 25, 2025, 1:36 AM

    @hazelweakly I thought the two hardest problems in computer science were:

    1. Human communication
    2. Getting people in tech to believe that human communication is important
    3. Off by one errors.

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  • evie!wec@fv390.hs.bam.moe
    Dec 25, 2025, 1:51 PM
    I know I'm wasting time on Christmas day posting on fedi, but as someone whose job is to teach systems design AND communication skills (for, like, presentations/briefings), let me tell ya, communicating is hard for a lot of engineers, not just CS-adjacent folks! I'm a huuuuge extrovert and there's never a dull day in a social situation in my mind, but to most of my students... the thought of giving a presentation in front of their 25 other students and me terrifies them. the stakes are low, but they're still super scared! and then, when they do get up there, they can't answer easy peasy questions for some reason or stand up there and scratch their butt while wiping drool off his face (true story).

    even then, I find myself stuck in a weird position asking the same question over and over to a seemingly-empty audience: how do I teach communications to engineers without scaring them?

    don't even get me started on anything related to philosophical ethics, there's a reason I say if I had to choose a handful of world leaders (which is already a problem in itself, of course), I'd rather choose 300 philosophy majors than 300 engineering majors... the engineering major saw "XYZ world-ending technology" in some story whose obvious plot was "don't create the XYZ", and they then proceed to build it/market it as a product!

    a teacher I had in high school told me soft skills were more important than anything else in the world. I now see why since I am apparently a member of a species of biped mammal that cannot do much without communicating with others of her species!

    oh yeah also bring back forced philosophy education in engineering schools, and fail students on the spot with a 4-credit-hour F if they use an LLM to do the assignment lol
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  • Daniel Reedersonekind@beige.party
    Dec 26, 2025, 3:26 AM

    @wec okay but the claim is not that 'these issues are hard for CS and easy for everyone else.'

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  • George Bailygeorgebaily@mastodon.social
    Dec 25, 2025, 10:30 PM

    @hazelweakly computer people can literally be making communication software for humans and not at any point think human communication is a thing

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  • Marijke Luttekesmahryekuh@hachyderm.io
    Feb 4, 2026, 11:23 AM

    @hazelweakly @anna It feels to me that point 2 has a root in the fact that CS is very (cis) male-dominated, where communication gets filed away under “soft skills”, which are associated with women and deemed less important (misogyny).

    Edit: I’ve noticed this issue mostly with older generations, not so much millennials.

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  • Dr. Anna Latouranna@mathstodon.xyz
    Feb 4, 2026, 3:03 PM

    @mahryekuh Just today a colleague came into my office to tell me that one of their students had asked them to ask me if the student could practice their presentation with me, because the student really likes my presentation style and feels that I give very valuable feedback 🥺 😭 🥰

    No idea who the student is, tho ^^

    @hazelweakly

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  • Vaneshi@bitbang.social
    Feb 4, 2026, 11:50 AM

    @hazelweakly

    The "stop showing off how many emails a second you can fire off and pick up the god damn phone" problem.

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  • Markmark@waterford.international
    Feb 4, 2026, 12:14 PM

    @hazelweakly Yes, and also thank for not saying “naming is hard”. (The dual write problem is hard, naming is just a minor inconvenience that comes down 1 and 2.)

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  • Stefan Baur 9 * 💉farbenstau@infosec.exchange
    Feb 4, 2026, 8:42 PM

    @hazelweakly And the four hardest problems in Computer Science are

    1. Human communication
    2. Getting people in tech to believe that human communication is important
    3. Avoiding off-by-one errors

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  • yeahyeahyensyeahyeahyens@det.social
    Mar 20, 2026, 10:23 AM

    @hazelweakly They are putting more effort into automating communication and having computers handle it than into acknowledging that it is essential for human coexistence

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  • s427s427@lou.lt
    Mar 20, 2026, 11:53 PM

    @hazelweakly or getting people in tech to believe that humans are important

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