I actually majored in both computer science and philosophy at a school with a top 5 CS program and a top 50 philosophy program. I found the combination useful, but eventually grew frustrated with much of the philosophy. My classes often spent more time splitting hairs than trying to say useful things. The philosophy that actually proved most useful were my logic courses, and one or two papers from philosophy of mind.
That said, philosophy is incredibly important. But, as PG has noted, we tend to do a poor job of it (http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html). We need to spend more time focused on saying useful, testable things. In short, the best scientific results merge with philosophy. So, everyone should be a philosopher, but should do the majority of their philosophy as science.
Again, both philosophy and computer science are important, but after studying both pretty intensely for 3.5 years (I graduated with over 180 credit hours), you have to pick and choose the philosophy. It's mostly useful for setting the initial biases on which the rest of your science will depend and for continuing to think about things science can't speak to, yet.
A related paper just came out in Science a few days ago. The authors used the inner workings of a fruit fly's brain to provide a robust solution to the Maximal Independent Set (MIS) problem.
The instruction set of a properly designed computer must be isomorphic to a minimal, elegant high-level programming language.
I've been a bit confused about the details of the loper-os project. For some reason, this sentence sparked a micro-epiphany and the whole thing came into focus. So, I thought the article, and the project at large, was worth sharing with HN.
Cal Newport also does a great job in keeping up with a lot of the published literature in these fields. Check out his books and blog at http://calnewport.com. It's been incredibly helpful to me over the past few years.
The applications for this sort of material are pretty incredible. Rubbery materials can often tear/degrade easily; I can't tell you how many times I've torn some soft plastic and thought to myself, "Well, that's useless now..." This material has the potential to totally change that.
Also, did anyone think of Superman when reading this story? I couldn't help but be reminded that he, too, is healed by "the power of the yellow sun".
