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Computer Science. Is it Really About Computers?
Jun.06, 2007 in
Computer Science
From Bruce Sterling’s Wired blog: Computer Science. Is it Really a Science, and What’s It a Science About? with a link to The Great Principles of Computing. Debating whether computer science is science is sure to illicit elicit forth great gobs of passioned points and counterpoints. This will be followed, of course, by ad hominen attacks relating to the fundamental status of a particular discipline. Finally the whole thing will terminate with everyone going home in a big tizzy.
Me, however, I’ve been spending too much time in computer science theory land so I’m not worried about whether computer science is a science. Me, I’m more worried about whether computer science is really about computers 
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June 6th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Haha yeah, everybody knows CS isn’t about computers. It’s about Turing machines! And Turing machines with extra features!
(I see it more as a branch of math, myself. I would imagine that’s a pretty common view.)
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June 6th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
A lot of the time CS doesn’t seem to be about computers. I think it’s usually about computation. (eg. what can be computed, and how.)
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June 7th, 2007 at 1:52 am
This post is going to elicit illicit responses?
Love,
–the pedant
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June 7th, 2007 at 4:04 am
Does not work the trackbacks??
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June 7th, 2007 at 10:44 am
I thought everybody knew that computer science was about computers. Just like astronomy is about telescopes.
(paraphrasing Djikstra, IIRC)
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