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“Computer science is not about computers”

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Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#21

Post by Apocryphon »

"Computer science was a fraud. It always had been. It was the only branch of science ever named after a gadget. He and his colleagues were basically no better than gizmo freaks. Now physics, that was true science. Nobody ever called physics “lever science” or “billiard ball science.“

The fatal error in computer science was that it modeled complex systems without truly understanding them. Computers simulated complexity. You might know more or less what was likely to happen. But the causes remained unclear."

- Bruce Sterling, Zenith Angle

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#22

Post by User23 »

neonological wrote: post #18
adrusi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that for some time now "science" has been used almost exclusively for disciplines that make use of experimental methodologies, but in earlier usage it just meant roughly "the process of creating knowledge." The German "Wissenschaft" (which is normally how "science" is translated) is closer to the older meaning (though I'm not fluent in German, so I'm just going off what I've been told).

But the inconsistency still exists regardless of the historical etymology. Math is not a science. A mathematician is Not a scientist. Why is computing a science?

Logic, Ethics, and Aesthetics are the three normative sciences. Mathematics falls comfortably within the domain of logic, and thus mathematics is a scientific enterprise. Computing science is the subset of the subset that deals with getting actual computable results.

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#24

Post by sum1datduznot »

Apocryphon wrote: post #21

"Computer science was a fraud. It always had been. It was the only branch of science ever named after a gadget. He and his colleagues were basically no better than gizmo freaks. Now physics, that was true science. Nobody ever called physics “lever science” or “billiard ball science.“ The fatal error in computer science was that it modeled complex systems without truly understanding them. Computers simulated complexit…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(job_description)

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#25

Post by dataflow »

benrbray wrote: post #11

For my entire time as an undergraduate, the large top-ten research university I attended offered no courses in programming language theory, nor were these topics woven into the computing curriculum at large. (actually, there may have been a handful of graduate courses, but undergrads were strictly prohibited from joining -- there was a mandatory theory of computation class required for all CS majors, but the topics v…

Relevant: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rich-programmer-foo...

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#26

Post by iratewizard »

benrbray wrote: post #11

For my entire time as an undergraduate, the large top-ten research university I attended offered no courses in programming language theory, nor were these topics woven into the computing curriculum at large. (actually, there may have been a handful of graduate courses, but undergrads were strictly prohibited from joining -- there was a mandatory theory of computation class required for all CS majors, but the topics v…

I personally feel the pain of this when trying to hire someone who understands core concepts in PL theory and can help maintain a framework. It's also not the sort of thing I can teach to my Sr devs on the job in under a year when they've never even touched anything like forth or lisp, or even tried to write a parser by hand.

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#28

Post by Apocryphon »

sum1datduznot wrote: post #24
Apocryphon wrote: post #21

"Computer science was a fraud. It always had been. It was the only branch of science ever named after a gadget. He and his colleagues were basically no better than gizmo freaks. Now physics, that was true science. Nobody ever called physics “lever science” or “billiard ball science.“ The fatal error in computer science was that it modeled complex systems without truly understanding them. Computers simulated complexit…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(job_description)

Naming it after a profession doesn't mitigate the critique from Sterling's quote. Mathematics isn't named calculator science.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EA-eVWEIKY

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#29

Post by mxscho »

In Europe, "Computer Science" is translated with a word that is a mix of "information" and "mathematics". University course names are:

> [...] informatique (French), Informatik (German), informatica (Italian, Dutch), informática (Spanish, Portuguese), informatika (Slavic languages and Hungarian) or pliroforiki (πληροφορική, which means informatics) in Greek. Similar words have also been adopted in the UK (as in the School of Informatics of the University of Edinburgh). In the U.S., however, informatics is linked with applied computing, or computing in the context of another domain. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science#Etymology

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