[rijoja]

computer science is not social science

if your code doesn't work it doesn't work

you can't bullshit a computer

for people that are doing social science it's an issue

but they where way past the point of no return already so it doesn't really matter

[grues-dinner]

> if your code doesn't work it doesn't work

Code can definitely only sort of work: only works on the happy path, only works on the computer it was developed on, only works for some versions of some dependencies, only works when single threaded, only works when the network is fast enough, only works for a single user at a time etc etc etc.

[rijoja]

yes so then you have a combination of code that works and code that doesn't work

and the code that doesn't work doesn't work

[haileys]

Software engineering is way more of a social practice than you probably want to believe.

Why is the code like that? How are people likely to use an API? How does code change over time? How can we work effectively on a codebase that's too big for any single person to understand? How can we steer the direction of a codebase over a long timescale when it's constantly changing every day?

[rijoja]

Yes that is very true but social science is more of a social practice than computer science

If you run your organization badly, you'll run into problems sooner, than if you are in social science, where you just have to say all the buzzwords and they'll just rubberstamp you true

If you are arguing that my point is that computer science would be 100% falsifiable and social science is 0% falsifiable then you're argument is a bit of a straw man

[rijoja]

> Why is the code like that? How are people likely to use an API? How does code change over time? How can we work effectively on a codebase that's too big for any single person to understand? How can we steer the direction of a codebase over a long timescale when it's constantly changing every day?

At which point you are studying project management theory, or whatever you call it

[monsieurgaufre]

I’d argue that computer science is on a gradient between social science and physics.

[rijoja]

I'd argue that anything that has science at the end isn't :)

[monsieurgaufre]

So computer science isn’t either then.

[rijoja]

that's the joke :D

[eesmith]

Materials science rolls its eyes every time it hears that hoary joke.

[queenkjuul]

Code can absolutely "kinda work" or "mostly work"

[rijoja]

aha and if it mostly works there are parts that doesn't work right?

[deepdarkforest]

>if your code doesn't work it doesn't work

you can't bullshit a computer

this is wrong. I would argue the difference between a junior dev/intern and a senior engineer is that while both can write code that works, the juniors find local maximas, like solutions that work, but can't scale, or wont be very easy to integrate/add features on top/maintain etc.

This happens in maths, biology, in all science fields. Experience is partly the ability to take decisions between options that both work.

This is why coding assistants are amazing at executing things you are clear on what you want to do, but can't help (yet) on big picture tweaks

[rijoja]

Right I'm not trying to be argumentative here, I see where you are coming from right.

My point being that it's quite easy to demonstrate that it can't scale, by running an experiment.

Meaning that you could quite easily BS your way through that by just agreeing with whatever the status quo is.

Whereas in social science you can't do an empirical experiment, so you're epistemologically on much much more shakier ground

> This happens in maths, biology, in all science fields Right but I wrote social science and not maths or biology.

For instance if someone where to say that due to Hegelian Dialeticts and gender critical theory, in the future women are destined to rule the world, this is a good thing, and this will lead to the abolishment of racial inequality and exploitation through capitalism

how do you prove that?

in comparison if the problem is that your software isn't efficient when there are over 100 instance, you can prove that by spinning up 100 instances?

You can't clone earth and force all the inhabitants to enact ideologically pure race critical theory, and then ask the inhabitants in the control group to try out nazism, wait for a while and then use that to prove that one or the other is the best way can you?