Thursday, July 11, 2013

“Is Computer Networks a boring area?”

Over on Quora, the question-and-answer Web site, my hackles were raised when I saw this question that seemed out of left field:
Is Computer Networks a boring area?
I'm asking this question since I'm looking at possible areas to do Masters in, and one of them is Computer Networks. [...] I've never met anyone who's been passionate about this field as of yet. I've met people from areas like data mining, AI, computer vision, robotics etc. who're fiercely in love with their subject. Thirdly, the very nature of this field made me ask this question. Innovation seems slow in general, especially hardware, and it appears that you get lost in a sea of implementing protocols and going through a lot of fine lines of code, instead of working on the next big thing.
I'd be glad if someone proves me wrong. Am I missing something here?
I couldn't help myself from piping up to defend the honor of computer networking (and discuss my own work in the process).

My answer: