donald (06/17/82)
What is Computer Science, that thou art mindful of it? I don't think that Computer Science is any closer to engineering than it is to mathematics; it is a peculiar mixture of both. Computer science is not a science in the strict sense of the word because engineering and mathematics are not sciences in that sense. Automata theory and Complexity theory are bona fide computer science, at least by most standards (see any issue of the Journal of the ACM). The fact that they precede the advent of modern digital computers is merely an implementation detail (ha ha, joke). The roots of many fields of computer science (e.g. systems analysis, operations research, human factors, data processing) precede modern computers. If you want examples of the "nonengineering" aspects of computer science, tear yourself away from your Unix Programmer's Guide or Digital Logic manuals and take a look at Dijkstra's "Discipline of Programming" or Gries "Science of Programming". There's more to Computers than shoving bytes around in C or writing arcane shell procedures. Don Chan (utcsrgv!donald)