Theory of Computation : How to Start . Leonid Levin* Boston University t For a field as young as Computer Science, its theory is unusually rich and fundamental . But the lack of understanding between the theorists and the rest of the field is notorious . Not only it diminishes the support for theoretical research, it also deprives the field fro m the benefits of its powerful foundations . It was not always the case . The very existence o f general purpose computers was based on theoretical ideas (obvious now, but strange at tha t time) : Church's Thesis and Universal Turing Machine . Shannon's work was both excellen t theory and a great source of practical ideas . I think, the present communication proble m lies in the misrepresentation of theory in Computer Science education by irrelevant material . The only "theoretical" course most CS majors take is often based on things like Context Free Grammars, Push-Down Automata, Regular Expressions and other string processing technic s of little theoretical relevance . Not only do the students get no idea of what the Theory o f Computation is about and no advance in ability to ever read
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Theory of computation: how to start
Levin, Leonid
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, Volume 22 (1)
Association for Computing Machinery – Mar 1, 1991
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