When did computer science theory get so hard?
> I tend to think this is an outlier- for the most part, CS theory back in the 1970's did not hard math.<p>CS theory always had hard math. Software engineering didn't (and still mostly doesn't) but also in the 1970's software didn't exist so you could literally do anything and it would become the standard if it was pushed hard enough.<p>It's not like there's an intrinsic reason TCP packets are the way they are now, it's largely an arbitrary choice that we standardized on.