Science & Tech Quote by Daniel J. Bernstein

A mathematician thanking God he wasnt made a computer scientist lands like a provocation disguised as gratitude. Daniel J. Bernstein is not an outsider lobbing cheap shots at a neighboring field; he is one of the most influential cryptographers alive, a figure whose work lives in code, standards fights, and the messy politics of security. So the line reads less like anti-tech snobbery and more like a jab at what "computer scientist" can imply in practice: a culture that too often rewards cleverness over clarity, novelty over correctness, and fashionable theory over adversarial reality.

The religious phrasing sharpens the irony. It frames disciplinary identity as fate, almost a moral condition, not just a résumé line. Underneath is a preference for mathematical hygiene: definitions that dont wobble, proofs that dont hand-wave, guarantees that survive contact with the real world. In cryptography, especially, Bernstein has spent decades arguing that security is not an aesthetic but a liability surface. Sloppy assumptions get people owned.

The context is the long-running tension between "CS as engineering" and "CS as mathematics" (and, occasionally, "CS as product"). Bernstein has often pushed against opaque performance claims, timing leaks, and the casual attitude that testing can substitute for proof. The barb, then, is aimed at a professional temperament: the willingness to ship uncertainty with confidence. He is thanking God for a training that treats precision as nonnegotiable, because in his corner of computing, imprecision isnt just wrong - its dangerous.