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Comment by ddeyar | Hacker News Reader

Some years ago i was thinking about the idea to study astronomy. I read an article back then in which it was told that most astronomy students end up beeing a computer scientist. I don't know if thats true. But I took it as an advice to study computer science :) and I'm pretty happy with that.

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I think this is pretty true. I think almost all of the hard science researchers are part software developers. Pretty much every professor I had in mechanical engineering was doing some type of programming or had graduate students/post docs doing it. My masters in oceanography was almost entirely built in Matlab and Python. One of the physics professors was studying black holes and their work revolved around making a cheap super computer with PS4s and running his black holes merger simulations on it.

I think that there's an inherent connection to this - code is an incredible tool that can take scientific research, not just in "traditional" natural sciences, but also in fields like sociology.

It has revolutionized all the other parts of our lives, so it makes sense that an inherent programming skill, if you're working in academic research, would follow.

We were strongly encouraged by both physics and astronomy professors to major in physics rather than astronomy if we wanted to work in astronomy. We were told (by the astronomers) that although an astronomy major has more of the needed skills, the physics majors were seen as better hires. We were told by the physicists that of course physics majors had those skills (that seemingly weren’t anywhere in the curriculum). :)

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