String Computation

Should really be StringsAreaBiggerDealThanNumbers?.

Well they are. The dirty secret of computer science is that it's a branch of linguistics, not mathematics.

Math CS is a sideshow, most computer scientists and JustaProgrammer's are manipulating languages. Discuss.

Well, there's all the basic "math CS" stuff I'd expect JustaProgrammer(s) to know - like computational complexity, the halting problem, mutual exclusion etc. But everything else is language manipulation. Your primary audience is other people (or yourself in six months time), and your job is to make yourself understood by them. The compiler understands anything syntactically correct, other people need to understand why you did what you did and what it means. This part of the job is why programming gets compared to craft or even art.

Umm, "computational complexity" is just counting string lengths, nothing more. -- IvanTkatchev

The dirty secret of mathematics is that it's a branch of linguistics too. -- DanHankins

Oo, so right. What little aptitude I have in mathematics derives entirely from my (slightly more extensive) skills with language.

Here's my take. Math and CS are flip sides of one coin : manipulating symbols. When you hear "math" and think "numbers", you don't know math; entire branches of math don't do much with numbers, e.g. topology. Formal reasoning about abstract entities is what both math and CS are about. Math approaches the problem from a theoretical standpoint (why, how, what if) whereas CS is practical - its prime question is "how to".

Maybe ProgrammingIsMathematicalEngineering

The dirty secret of linguistics is that it's a branch of math. The dirty secret of X is that it's a branch of Y, and vice versa. Linguistics/CS/MathematicsIsaBigMessyGraph. LifeIsaBigMessyGraph. Okay? No big deal, get over it.