Computer science is often viewed in an extremely biased lens by the public. More often than not, media misconstrues this science by making it seem as if it is all about hackers and stealing bank account information, meanwhile this is a field that dips its toes into theory and application, making it more logical and elaborate than it is portrayed. Fortunately there is the internet and there are resources that can detail what the heck computer science is for those who are advanced and those who know nothing at all. Two blogs that display honest, yet very different aspects of this discipline include Troy Hunt’s security blog and Aaron Roth’s Computational Theory class blog. While these blogs might be trivial to anyone outside the computer science field, these two sites disseminate several vastly distinct, but accurate sides of computer science.

There are a variety of fields within in the broad topic of computer science which makes the community of blogs related very diverse and vivid. Troy Hunt is well-versed in security and was even awarded Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Developer Security, thus the overarching theme of Hunt’s blog is technological security. He discusses very hands-on security topics that are accessible to people who have a computer and internet and he seeks to inform people about security issues as well as try to get more people interested in technological security. I would say he is very successful at informing and keeping his audience engaged and excited for more (at least I am always excited to read new posts). Hunt does not just simply drone on about hackers and security, rather he elaborates on why said bug, virus or hack is an issue, provides some technological background information, describe the implications of the issue, provide other sources on the subject matter and sometimes even suggests fixes. For this reason, this blog caters to anyone in the tech field or anyone who works on tech for any type of company, but the information is clear and straightforward enough to appeal to the layperson tinkering in tech fields. The most interesting thing I learned from his blog was in and outs of the recent Bash bug. This is a bug that has been in Unix systems that use Bash for nearly 20 years and it makes it extremely simple for someone to compromise your system. Hunt is very established in the world of technological security and that shows in his blog, conveys the more applicable, understandable and concrete side of computer science.

Conversely, Aaron Roth is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and is knowledgeable of computational and theoretical aspects of computer science, thus his blog is vastly more academic and scientific/mathematical than Hunt’s. In fact, Roth’s blog is about the world of computation and problem solving. It was actually meant for the students in his class and serves as a means to go over and elaborate topics covered in his class as well as provide some background to computational theory outside of the classroom. Its target audience is definitely his students, but it is also accessible to other computer science students taking a similar course elsewhere. Roth also frequently sources where he gets his content from to redirect his students to the works of other computer scientists, professors and engineers. The main purpose of this blog seems to be to provide a huge amount of information to his student. For his intents and purposes, he is definitely successful. For someone whose not entirely invested in entirely understanding this subject, it will be difficult to read through his post due to the excessive jargon used that might take someone aback. Fortunately, Roth is gracious in providing lots of technical know how and information on this really abstract topic. If possible, the best way to correct his is by potentially creating a separate blog going into similar topics, but making it more engaging, less verbose, and directed towards the layperson. I personally found myself confused because he approaches problem solving in a level that I am not quite at yet, but it certainly has been helpful in keeping an open mind when it comes to problem solving and learning about algorithms. All in all this blog does well in conveying information to students studying computer science despite the focus on logical and abstract topics. To put it simply, this blog disseminates the logic and problem solving aspect of the computer science field.

Many people interested in going into this field have a very picturesque image of computer science, especially with how the media portrays computer science with news and movies (Hackers [1995]), but that is not remotely close to what computer science is all about, rather it is a delicate balance in application and theory. One blog, by Troy Hunt is strongly based security, application oriented side of computer science, meanwhile Aaron Roth’s blog gives a more academic and theoretical aspect of this field revolving around computational theory.

References:

http://www.troyhunt.com/

http://aaronsadventures.blogspot.com/

http://impulse.coreatcu.com/opinions-insights/2014/10/30/hacker-culture-bank-account-mine/