Computer Science an Art.

by Walter Thomas Jr Tomtotom1 Marketing Promotions, LLC

Computer Science" was invented as a term to distinguish it from "computer engineering" -- i.e., the design/development (engineering) of computer hardware. It was a way to set up an academic department and degree program that wasn't part of existing EE departments. There was an early hope of people like Dijkstra that there could be a kind of "software mathematics" developed around algorithmic proof and characterization. There isn't, and there won't be. There's a field called "haptics": the science and engineering of tactile human-machine interactions and interfaces. But that's not "Computer Science". Artificail intelligence was once the next great hope for "Computer Science". It's not going anywhere. There is a field called "Information Science" -- something that librarians do. "Computer Science" isn't that, either. It's bifurcated into esoterica such as Turing logic and complexity theorems, numerical computation, and things like compiler and OS and database design. Oh, and learning enough programming to get a job. Unfortunately, "Computer Science" doesn't actually exist. There is no "science" at all in "Computer Science". It is about "software engineering", and it would be nice if we could finally admit that. By the way, in the late 1960s I reviewed some of the early drafts of Knuth's first book, back when he was using computers and operating systems and compilers and languages we had designed years before to test his algorithms. And no one has even mentioned von Neumann? It's amazing how little of the actual history of the development of computers most "educated" Computer Science graduates actually know.

by WTon 2/25/2014