computer science / information technology
they got them mixed together, it should be
computer technology / information science
“Computer science is not about computers”
151–160 of 293 posts
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 mat…
Turing machines are terribly inefficient, though. They may be easier to reason about than lambda calculus, but not good for practical computing purposes. Their value was in proving that logical and mathematical reasoning could be mechanized with an automatic device, something that had not been clear until then. Computing science cares a lot about building efficient processes. Thus to create real working programs, a b…
Efficiency is not important at all when you talk about a mathematical proof. Do we really care about a proof using induction taking n or n^2 operations?
For seeing whether a given statement holds true, minimizing complexity is the most important.
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Indeed in much of the world outside the USA there isn't even such a label as "computer science"; the stuff that's taught as "computer science" in the USA is taught under some sort of "math" label.
In Portugal, there is some time to spend with such matters during the 5 year long that an Informatics Engineering degree takes (certified by the Engineering Order). Since Bologna, it got levelled to Masters, but most still take the 3 + 2 years, not to be left behind the older generation that had 5 + 2 for Master. So plenty of time to go down into the subjects that USA consider computer science. However for those that…
As seen on USA? European CS degrees are generally more comprehensive because we do all the humanities already in high school which leaves more time for math and it is more common for people to continue with a masters degree.
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#154The beginning of this lecture (30 seconds in) by Harold Abelson (author of SICP - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) explains why Computer Science is a terrible name here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J_xL4IGhJA&list=PLE18841CAB... Not sure about the year.
[deleted]
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#155For 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.
I wish my colleagues would appreciate the beauty of abstraction and PL theory as much as you do. It seems they actively resist any effort in that direction.
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#156I agree with the sentiment, but I've actually come to consider "computer science" to be a great name for our field.
Turing's universal machine is the original dependency inversion of our field: instead of specifically studying the programs that can be written for any particular hardware device, we largely study phenomena that are regarded as computation as defined by the Church-Turing thesis, and require that the hardware vendors supply suitable universal machines which can instantiate the phenomena of our study. Or field is the science of computers -- every program is a blueprint for a computational device -- but we choose to simulate most of our blueprints using universal machines, so that we don't have to send each one off to the silicon fab separately.
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#157In Germany the equivalent field and degree is called “Informatics” (Informatik). I always felt weird about telling Americans I studied “computer science” because it sounds so dumbed down. It’s like how a 6 year old would describe it to someone else: “my older brother studies the science with the computers!”
Even though I appreciate the origins of "informatics" I prefer "computer science" nowadays because the word is less loaded in Germany. I feel like in the US there is more appreciation for CS. The word "informatics" has already been taken over and devalued by clueless business people like "IT" before it.
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Portugal, there is some time to spend with such matters during the 5 year long that an Informatics Engineering degree takes (certified by the Engineering Order). Since Bologna, it got levelled to Masters, but most still take the 3 + 2 years, not to be left behind the older generation that had 5 + 2 for Master. So plenty of time to go down into the subjects that USA consider computer science. However for those that…
As seen on USA? European CS degrees are generally more comprehensive because we do all the humanities already in high school which leaves more time for math and it is more common for people to continue with a masters degree.
Well, from what I know about them anyway.
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#159In 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…
This wikipedia article is not very accurate. In Hungary "informatika" is usually used only for primary/secondary school subjects covering every-day IT tasks like document editing, typing, or sending email. The most commonly used names for CS courses are "számításelmélet" or "számítástudomány" which translate as "theory of computing" and "science of computing".
Re: “Computer science is not about computers”
#160My 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…
When you mentioned infinite structures, I thought you'd bring up the idea that our goal to automate often pits us against problems defined as collections of infinitary instances. I don't think the potential infinity of tapes and running times poses as much of a concern by comparison.
Maybe computer science is about giving, to borrow a little bit from Hilbert, finitary representation to infinitary structures. (Finitary representation with other properties of interest, such as tractability and whatnot, of course.)