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Foundations of Computer Science

i.stanford.edu

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Re: Foundations of Computer Science

#21

Post by statik_42 »

vbtemp wrote: post #15

From the first paragraph of the first chapter: > But fundamentally, computer science is a science of abstraction — creating the right model for thinking about a problem and devising the appropriate mechanizable techniques to solve it. Too often in computer science education these days, this essential fact is lost.

So true. People at my school don't always realize that computer science isn't just about programming, it's truly a subset of mathematics.

Re: Foundations of Computer Science

#23

Post by scott_s »

statik_42 wrote: post #21
vbtemp wrote: post #15

From the first paragraph of the first chapter: > But fundamentally, computer science is a science of abstraction — creating the right model for thinking about a problem and devising the appropriate mechanizable techniques to solve it. Too often in computer science education these days, this essential fact is lost.

So true. People at my school don't always realize that computer science isn't just about programming, it's truly a subset of mathematics.

HN discussion on an essay I wrote, "Computer Science is Not Math": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3928276

Re: Foundations of Computer Science

#24

Post by patricklynch »

vishal0123 wrote: post #20

Why so many books these days are available to download for free one chapter at a time. It just makes reading worse.

I like it; it makes it easier to read in a web browser.

But if you want a full copy:

1. DownThemAll to pull down all of the .pdf links,

2. pdftk to merge them all into one file

Re: Foundations of Computer Science

#26

Post by realti »

vishal0123 wrote: post #20

Why so many books these days are available to download for free one chapter at a time. It just makes reading worse.

I just downloaded the entire book using ' wget -mkp http://i.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html#pdfs ' (Should work from any *nix systems having wget utility; I tried from mac) (explained here http://opstribe.wordpress.com/2013/06/22/a-simpler-backup-me... )

Re: Foundations of Computer Science

#27

Post by chas »

statik_42 wrote: post #21
vbtemp wrote: post #15

From the first paragraph of the first chapter: > But fundamentally, computer science is a science of abstraction — creating the right model for thinking about a problem and devising the appropriate mechanizable techniques to solve it. Too often in computer science education these days, this essential fact is lost.

So true. People at my school don't always realize that computer science isn't just about programming, it's truly a subset of mathematics.

Homotopy type theory[1] is essentially working to show that math is (or can be viewed as) an interesting application of computer science.

[1] http://homotopytypetheory.org/2013/06/20/the-hott-book/

Re: Foundations of Computer Science

#28

Post by jorgeleo »

dschiptsov wrote: post #17

1992 - a world without Java... And, you know, the book about foundations is... SICP.) OK, this is C Edition .

if

    "computer science is a science of abstraction — creating the right model for thinking about a problem and devising the appropriate mechanizable techniques to solve it"
then

    language is of no importance

Re: Foundations of Computer Science

#29

Post by signa11 »

Zergy wrote: post #11
cobookman wrote: post #5

We used the book for ECE 3020 - Mathematical foundations of computer Engineering at Gatech. Lecture notes have been taken down, but here are our homework solutions: http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~dblough/3020/solutions/hw_solut...

This is one thing about GaTech that really annoys me. Every professor seems to remove thier notes at the end of every semester and only post them when the content becomes relevent to the course. You cant look ahead and cant reference them afterwards.

> Every professor seems to remove thier notes at the end of every semester and only post them when the content becomes relevent to the course.

might this be possibly done because there is not too much variation in course content from one sem to next ?

Re: Foundations of Computer Science

#30

Post by hackinthebochs »

chas wrote: post #27
statik_42 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. People at my school don't always realize that computer science isn't just about programming, it's truly a subset of mathematics.

Homotopy type theory[1] is essentially working to show that math is (or can be viewed as) an interesting application of computer science. [1] http://homotopytypetheory.org/2013/06/20/the-hott-book/

Very interesting! I've often got into nasty arguments with people online when I dared to say that Computer science (Computing) was not a subset of math, but rather could be viewed more naturally as a superset. It is good to see serious academic work being done along these lines.
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