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Comment by maxidog | Hacker News Reader

I studied “computation” at Oxford 92-95 while CAR Hoare was still there and basically all they taught us about computers were these formal methods. They actually thought it would revolutionise programming and looked down at anything else as “hand-waving”. Think the syllabus was abandoned only a few years later thank goodness.

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Interesting to hear your experience. I was there 94–97, when the curriculum was still pretty heavy on formal methods (and functional programming).

For me it was wonderful. I already knew how to write computer programs, as that's what I had spent most of my waking hours doing before that point, but learning how to think rigorously about the correctness of programs was a revelation to me.

I studied "Mathematics and Computation" there in 89-92 because they seemed to think that "computation" was a fad that was probably going away, so you couldn't let people study just "Computation".

There was a certain amount of formal methods, but only in a perfunctory manner, as if to satisfy an inconvenient requirement. Some functional programming, but in an extremely shallow way. Overall, I did not learn a single useful thing in 3 years.

I followed this up with Ph.D. in Computer Science somewhere else, which was also a complete waste of time.

Lol, thanks for that, was worried I was being too negative!

Not a single useful thing? A complete waste of time? Really not anything that you found intriguing or thought-provoking for its own sake? I did the same course nine years later and found it very stimulating, even if it wasn't always directly "applicable" so to speak. But perhaps the syllabus had changed a bit by then.

What I learned from these comments sharing their experiences from one time to another is that the curriculum evolved and no one had the same experience.

Not to mention how individuals perceive things - two students with similar aptitude in the same class can still have their own very different experiences.

Just a heads up.

> I followed this up with Ph.D. in Computer Science somewhere else, which was also a complete waste of time.

It has been shown this form of thinking results in depression.

Thanks, friend. I currently don't have depression, but I'll see if I can work towards that.

Still a strong presence in 98-01 but also lots of functional programming, algorithms and complexity and the tail end of the parallel research boom. I loved it.

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