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In contrast, many schools nowadays are moving away from computing concepts towards teaching students how to use Microsoft Office, which troubles me greatly.
A lot of people think it is. Computers are a deep well and you could easily subdivide it quite a bit. 1. Math-heavy "CS" that studies algorithms. 2. The study of teams and best practices, maybe "Computer Sociology" 3. The study of tech team and company efficiency, maybe under psychology. 4. Computer Engineering, the study of how to engineer computers 5. The hypothetical science behind that engineering, the science no…
So they cargo cult CS into a sort of weird pure/applied-ish math hybrid full of contingent generalisations like Big O and debatable abstraction traditions - not least the idea of provability, which only applies to conceptually self-contained micro-problems and is a much harder sell for big complex systems.
The engineering track - including the theory of how to design systems so they actually work, are easy to use, and are maintainable - is underrepresented.
It's technically not even a science. It's in the realm of logic and maths. After all we don't call algebra a science, why does computing all of sudden need the word? So to some it all up: computer science is neither about computers nor is it a science.
This reminds me of Holy Roman Empire, it's neither Holy nor Roman nor it's an Empire.
Avoiding computer science directly... Geophysics is a "telescope science." A typical geophysicist sees themselves as experts in seismic interpretation, the tool they use. When the subject turns to the actual subject (the earth), they call it geology, or rock physics. It's not an idealistic take, or a very scientific one, but it's apparently useful to their work.
To take the reductio ad absurdum head on, I don't think it's totally useless to think of astronomy or microbiology as telescope or microscope sciences. It certainly introduces biases, but it might also remove certain biases and lead to new ways of phrasing a question. It might lead to new lines of inquiry, and is somewhat descriptive of how these fields developed historically. Wasn't Astronomy Astrology, before it was telescope science?
You could go with an intentionally provocative "computer science is not about mathematics" or "not about science."
What if we were to phrase Dijkstra's statement as a question: "Is computer science about computers?" It's not a statement you can approach with empirical falsification. That doesn't mean it's false, or useless. It just means you can't treat it like you would F=ma.
"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…
I think this part is backwards, and I would even say that CS is about complexity itself. In some ways it is even meta-mathematical even though it is a subset of mathematics.
There is an interesting paper measuring the complexity of different things in terms of a minimal Turing machine (sorry, I’m not sure about the details but will try to find it) and it gave a relatively small number for the complexity of the base axiom set of modern maths (few kb, or maybe MB?) It really put it in perspective for me what is mathematically provable and all the rest of things that we don’t even have the tools to reason about, at most we can compute it.
I've come to believe that ideas/statements such as these are crucial, but neither true nor false. They're a perspective lens. Ideally, we should be able to slip in and out of such perspective lenses. A contradictory statement could be equally true/useful, even (especially?) if held simultaneously. Avoiding computer science directly... Geophysics is a "telescope science." A typical geophysicist sees themselves as expe…
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 S…
That is true but in french at least "informatique" means both "computer science" (for example you can study "informatique" at university) and "anything related to computers". "What's your line of work?": a DBA, sysadmin, software developer, computer scientist, etc. may all answer simply "informatique". A series of books for beginners about Excel, Word, Internet, etc. may be called "Collection informatique". Or if, sa…
- Students learning to use MS Office in school? Informatik.
- People fixing printers and replacing your harddrive? Informatik.
- System administrators managing a datacenter? Informatik.
- Data scientist applying deep learning techiques? Informatik.
- University professor trying to prove P==NP? Informatik.
Honestly, I envy the Americans for their destinction between "computer science" (CS) and "information technology" (IT). Even if computer science is not really about computers.
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 S…
In 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?
There is an uncanny valley between non-science and science. Realistically, everything we know about a lot of things exists in that uncanny valley. Most or all of psychology & economics. A lot of of zoology, ecology, health sciences etc. Yet, it's an uncomfortable place.
Different professions have dealt with it differently over time, usually trying to reach one bank or the other.
The bad name pseudoscience has isn't unearnearned. Our modern conception of "scientific" (empirical falsification, etc.) was kinda invented to debunk turn of the century psychology and economics... and those often did earn pseudoscience's reputation.
The philosophical implications of "hard" sciences really are different, and the disadvantages of semi-scientific pursuits do really manifest.
Say we study mental health impacts of exercise on teenagers. You may find a result in one school. It might be replicable in a nearby school. It probably won't hold true in a different country or a decade. That's because we aren't really isolating fundamentals, as scientists should. OTOH, we can't isolate fundamentals in a lab and still have results that are relevant to actual mental health IRL. Does that mean the whole pursuit is pseudoscience?
Computer science is in the same position. You can strive for an F=ma, ideal understanding of fundamentals... but... there's not always a lot of gas in that car.