Ask HN: What are some unsolved practical CS problems?

3 pointsaristofun2 comments

Are there down-to-earth big problems in modern computing?

Not theoritical ones like NP problem, but more like creating hi temperature superconductors in physics.

Is this question even making any sense?

I think a lot of problems I see regularly are around standards. Think about the problem of PDF extraction. It's not that computers can't do that, it's just that PDFs aren't governed by a standard that makes it easy for everyone to just adopt and do. The difficulty of a winning "solution" isn't about making some new document scheme that solves all the problems (I'm sure this has been done) but getting people to universally use it.

solving the multi-master SQL database once and for all, and have that solution under a free-software license (or at least open source).

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