Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Computer science is not about computers”

quoteinvestigator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 293 posts

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#11

Post by benrbray »

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 varied wildly between semesters and the primary lecturer was notoriously apathetic about teaching)

In graduate school, I attended another large top-ten research university and again, no courses on programming language theory. The reason being all the PL faculty had either recently been poached by industry or accepted positions at more prestigious universities.

The result was that my entire computing education felt like watching shadows on the wall of Plato's cave; I was never exposed to fundamental concepts like lambda calculus or to non-standard languages like Haskell or Lisp that might have given a different perspective on computing.

Only recently in the past 1-2 years have I started to fill in the gaps myself, but I can't help but feel cheated. It's pretty crazy that the research-level faculty turnover can prevent thousands of students from being exposed to such an important aspect of computing.

(imagine, for instance, if an entire class of engineers had no option to take a course on heat transfer simply because there was no research faculty available who specialized in heat transfer research)

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#14

Post by reifyx »

teleforce wrote: post #8
neonological wrote: post #5

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.

There's this old picture from a 1986 MIT lecture: https://miro.medium.com/max/4448/1*-yaqXNO1tUwVkUpyOqTT7Q@2x....

Re: “Computer science is not about computers”

#18

Post by neonological »

adrusi wrote: post #9
neonological wrote: post #5

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.

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?

Post reply on HN