Thanks! Coming from you with the impressive stuff you have done, that means a lot!
Oh you are also a mathematician!!!
So cool
I find it strange that engineering and software could not be considered for PhD. I mean maybe there is innovation but you are too critical to see it.
They can; In fact, a number of PhDs have been granted based for work on the underlying Vega/Vega-Lite libraries.
Sure, but, in addition to an enormous amount of work, there is a fair amount of real innovation in both of those. 20 or so years ago it was a serious amount of work to write a full compiler, but not much (even any) innovation. Yet, I know for a fact that a fair amount of people got their CS PhD writing a compiler for yet another 'new' language. Most of that was pretty egregious IMO. YMMV 😉