Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2016 August 15

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August 15

What has Spain done in the field of computer science?

In computer science, what has been invented or discovered in Spain? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.57.72.82 (talk) 17:57, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Category:Computer_scientists led me to Category:Spanish_computer_scientists. If you click through those people, and perhaps check their web pages at their home universities, you can find what they have published on. E.g. here [1] is Nuria Oliver's publication list. This is by no means exhaustive, but should give you an overview of what Spanish academics have been doing in computer science recently. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:01, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

There's not much, but you can look at List of Spanish inventions and discoveries#Computing and Communications. --Canley (talk) 05:57, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

I did a Wikidata query for things invented by computer scientists with Spanish citizenship, but no results unfortunately. --Canley (talk) 06:01, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't expect much. I have heard from Spanish computer science professors that they didn't even get their first computer science degree in Spain until the mid 80's. So, they weren't active in the field until most of what we know as the big inventions in computer science were already invented. 209.149.113.4 (talk) 12:49, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Also depends on what you count as an invention or discovery. You can find literally hundreds of research papers using the method I described above, and all of them have some aspect of novelty in their methods or conclusions etc. So for example this paper [2] demonstrates a new/novel method for detecting boredom in mobile phone users. It might not be on the same level some other inventions in computer science, but it is an invention of sorts. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:29, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

That is correct. If a PhD degree is done correctly, it must include some sort of new (novel) research. I know that many people get a PhD with a thesis that simply rehashes topics that are already known, but it is supposed to be something new. Therefore, every PhD in Computer Science should have some new invention or discovery - which would imply that every PhD in Spain made some sort of invention or discovery. 209.149.113.4 (talk) 14:35, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Computer science has really only existed since the end of World War 2, and for much of that period Spain was a bad place to do science. Spain's economy was ruined by the Civil War (see Economic history of Spain#The Franco Era, 1939-75) and its economic isolation during the war and for a decade afterward saw it fall far behind, economically and especially technologically. Franco's fascist government purged the universities (see Art and culture in Francoist Spain#Schools and universities) and brought the curriculum and operation of higher education under ideologically motivated central control. University rectors had to be members of the Falange party (meaning real academics were replaced with Dolores Umbridge-like party henchmen), a centralised buro-cracy [sic] that lasted until 1970. The curriculum was controlled by the party, the army, and the party's fake trades union, with (here comes the crazy part) the science curriculum heavily influced by ultra-conservative catholic organisation Opus Dei (no, really - an American Association for the Advancement of Science's discussion of that is on their website). Unsurprisingly this led to a significant brain drain, with many spanish academics moving to other parts of Europe or to the americas. It really took until the 1990s for the Spanish economy to unfuck itself and slough off most of the embedded cultural cretinism of the Franco period. So, when the big works in computer science were being done in the US and Europe, especially from the 1950s through the 1970s, Spanish universities were too poor, too isolated, and too hidebound to properly participate. Even now the legacy persists, because the spanish computer pioneers of the 1970s, that didn't get their chance, would be the senior professors teaching CS now. This list of top CS programmes, for example, has 8 UK universities but only 3 Spanish ones (comparing the two countries per-capita, Spain should have about 6). 84.92.175.198 (talk) 23:17, 18 August 2016 (UTC)