Computer Science = The Study of Information Processing
“Computer science is not about computers”
101–110 of 293 posts
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#102My view is quite unconventional, but I believe, computer science is a branch of mathematics that deals with large but finite structures (so they need an algorithmic description). Compare with most of "legacy" mathematics, which studies countable structures (so the description can use arbitrary series). Of course, there are larger sets, but they mostly serve as a theater (just like countable infinity is just a theater…
This is good thinking and I am sad to hear that it is unconventional. And now I'll contradict the part of what you said about finite structures: At a theoretical level, the field deals with infinite structures, namely the Turing Machine tape and infinite time. We use finite Computing Machines to simulate a finite section of that tape in a finite time. Maybe we should call it Turing Machine Science, because we use com…
> Maybe we should call it Turing Machine Science
Nope. Turing machines are arbitrary and rather unmathematical. The lambda calculus is a much better computational formalism, more mathematically grounded and oriented, with far more direct practical applications.
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#103This is straight from the school of Peter Naur.
He called it datalogy, the science of the nature and the use of data.
See Peter Naur: “The Science of Datalogy”, Communications of the ACM, July 1966.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/365719.366510
Incidentally, he became the first professor of datalogy in Denmark at the University of Copenhagen, founding DIKU, the Institute of Datalogy.
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whenever this comes up I feel compelled to say that Dijkstra has a huge blind spot with this, that perhaps is more obvious with decades of hindsight. He advocates formal proof for a functional specification of a program to be part and parcel of writing it, and note that what he refers to by formal proof is ambiguous. If he means the informal proofs mathematicians write and publish all day long, these actually include…
One of my Uni professors was working on Proof-carrying code *( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-carrying_code ). I got a cursory involvement. Although I agree with you, the fact that there is a way forward and is entirely based in mathematics (on the formal side) makes me also agreeable with OP. I don't see a contradiction. If you talk about the more informal side- the way something is used does not necessarily de…
Indeed, I don't disagree with OP. I just felt compelled to point major problems with Dijkstra's argument, because it's somewhat generally known yet its very real shortcomings aren't as widely known.
The general response seems to be that "yeah, ideally we should be more mathematically rigorous with programs if we have time and mathematical expertise", but few have sufficient exposure to formal methods to understand that it's far from the panacea the memo makes it out to be and there are more reasons not to do it than just time and expertise.
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#105My view is quite unconventional, but I believe, computer science is a branch of mathematics that deals with large but finite structures (so they need an algorithmic description). Compare with most of "legacy" mathematics, which studies countable structures (so the description can use arbitrary series). Of course, there are larger sets, but they mostly serve as a theater (just like countable infinity is just a theater…
I always tell my students that computer science the special subset of math that that is coincidentally "easily" executable on a computer.
This subsumes finite structures, parseable Problem descriptions, structured formulas, formalized algorithms, etc.
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#106This is straight from the school of Peter Naur. He called it datalogy, the science of the nature and the use of data. See Peter Naur: “The Science of Datalogy”, Communications of the ACM, July 1966. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/365719.366510 Incidentally, he became the first professor of datalogy in Denmark at the University of Copenhagen, founding DIKU, the Institute of Datalogy.
Datalogy seems like a bad name especially now in the era of "Big Data" & "Data Scientists"..
Maybe Computology would be a better name..
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is good thinking and I am sad to hear that it is unconventional. And now I'll contradict the part of what you said about finite structures: At a theoretical level, the field deals with infinite structures, namely the Turing Machine tape and infinite time. We use finite Computing Machines to simulate a finite section of that tape in a finite time. Maybe we should call it Turing Machine Science, because we use com…
> Maybe we should call it Turing Machine Science Nope. Turing machines are arbitrary and rather unmathematical. The lambda calculus is a much better computational formalism, more mathematically grounded and oriented, with far more direct practical applications.
If you like, we can generalize and call it "computation science" to avoid the focus on the tool/machine in favor of the process.
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#108In my opinion, this thread illustrates insecurity over naming that people within this profession exhibit regularly.
The analogies that this argument hinges on are often brought up in a dogmatic manner with historic terms jeered in euphoric tone.
In threads like these devil's advocates, normally copious, are scant. Why?
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is good thinking and I am sad to hear that it is unconventional. And now I'll contradict the part of what you said about finite structures: At a theoretical level, the field deals with infinite structures, namely the Turing Machine tape and infinite time. We use finite Computing Machines to simulate a finite section of that tape in a finite time. Maybe we should call it Turing Machine Science, because we use com…
> Maybe we should call it Turing Machine Science Nope. Turing machines are arbitrary and rather unmathematical. The lambda calculus is a much better computational formalism, more mathematically grounded and oriented, with far more direct practical applications.
Why would you think that? I believe I’ve read that even Church himself said that Turing machines are a more elegant basis for computations, since they are much easier to mathematically reason about. I’m sure one can prove everything proved for Turing machines for lambda calculus, but I disagree with your statement that it is more mathematically grounded. It may be true in a syntactic form, but definitely not in a mathematical structure one.
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#110And calculus has nothing to do with pebbles or counting. So what? Also, isn’t it easiest to think of a computer as an abstract concept that could both represent a physical device and the abstract computer? Computation needs a computer, whether real or abstract. Lastly, I think science is the more “wrong” word in the name.
> And calculus has nothing to do with pebbles or counting. So what?
Coincidentally, in my native tongue, we regularly don't use "calculus" as a term for mathematical analysis any more than we use "computer science" for informatics.