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But... computer scientists don't write code! That's not what they're studying, it's not their job!

Writing code is what women do.

"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."



While I do not agree to the fashion in which the above comment was made, I do agree with the sentiment.

I know a few computer scientists who are really good at algorithms and theoretical computer science but will not write/be-willing-to-write code. There are, many times, constraints because of lack of proper representation in the language or because of added complexity in actual code than in pseudo code (because of edge cases - unnecessary boilerplate code to just make the code run etc.).

Additionally, many a times the paper might be presenting part of a larger algorithm/solution and that part in itself might not be useful/compilable.

I think that pseudo code fulfills the need for most of the cases; at times when it doesn't peer reviewers would ask for code and the same will be provided if possible.

[edit: typos]


Oh and papers without implementation make up a significant part of a lot of undergraduate course projects. I am actually looking for an interesting research paper to implement for Digital Image Processing.




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