rapaport@sunybcs (William J. Rapaport) (09/08/87)
A colleague of mine in a philosophy department recently asked me if
I could give him "some major causal laws, principles or regularities
that are special to Computer Science.... (Every science has its special
laws, so what are some for Computer Science?)"
I vaguely recall a recent discussion on one of the nets about this. If so,
is there some way I could get a copy of it (hard or soft)? If not,
would anyone like to take a stab at answering this?
William J. Rapaport
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Computer Science, SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260
(716) 636-3193, 3180
uucp: ..!{ames,boulder,decvax,rutgers}!sunybcs!rapaport
csnet: rapaport@buffalo.csnet
internet: rapaport@cs.buffalo.edu
[if that fails, try: rapaport%cs.buffalo.edu@cs.relay.net]
bitnet: rapaport@sunybcs.bitnetcorwin@apple.UUCP (Entomology Lab) (09/10/87)
In article <5113@sunybcs.UUCP> rapaport@sunybcs.UUCP (William J. Rapaport) writes: > >A colleague of mine in a philosophy department recently asked me if >I could give him "some major causal laws, principles or regularities >that are special to Computer Science.... (Every science has its special >laws, so what are some for Computer Science?)" > "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." "There is always one more bug" "The differnce between a bug and a feature is that a feature is documented" -cory -- corwin@apple.[UUCP, CSNET] Disclaimer: The preceding message is not based on reality.
shafto@aurora.UUCP (Michael Shafto) (09/11/87)
I just saw a tech report by Peter J. Denning on the topic "Is computer science science?" The tech report was issued through RIACS here at Ames. It will allegedly appear as an editorial in the Oct., 1987, CACM. The title is something like "Paradigms Crossed" -- referring to the crossed paradigms of design vs. experimentation, or engineering vs. science. I would rate this "real good" on a scale of 1 to 10, and I urge interested parties to watch for and read it. Mike Shafto
ed298-ak@violet.berkeley.edu (Edouard Lagache) (09/11/87)
In article <6195@apple.UUCP> corwin@apple.UUCP (Entomology Lab) writes: >In article <5113@sunybcs.UUCP> rapaport@sunybcs.UUCP (William J. Rapaport) writes: >> .... Does Computer Science have any laws? >> >"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." >"There is always one more bug" >"The differnce between a bug and a feature is that a feature is documented" >-cory Hey those aren't laws from Computer Science, they are from the Science (Religion?) of Murphyology! E.L.
lindsay@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Lindsay Groves) (09/30/87)
In article <5068@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> ed298-ak@violet.berkeley.edu (Edouard Lagache) writes: >>> >.... Does Computer Science have any laws? >>> >>"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." >> ... > > Hey those aren't laws from Computer Science, they are from the > Science (Religion?) of Murphyology.! > > E.L. The August issue of the Communications of the ACM contains an article by C.A.R.Hoare and eight others, entitled "Laws of Programming". One of their laws (4) is: ABORT U P = ABORT where ABORT (which they denote by an upside down T) is a statement that can do anything ("It places no constraint on the executing machine, which may do anything, or fail to do anything; in particular, it may fail to terminate"), and U is nondeterministic choice. The text explaining this law says: "This law is sometimes known as Murphy's Law, which state, "If it can go wrong it will"; the left-hand side describes a machine that CAN go wrong (or can behave like P), whereas the right-hand side might be taken to describe a machine that WILL go wrong. But the true meaning of the law is actually worse than this: The program ABORT will not always go wrong -- only when it ismost disastrous for it to do so! THe abundance of empirical evidence for law (4) suggests that it should be taken as the first law of computer programming." It seems that being part of "Murphyology" doesn't preclude something from being a law of Computer Science -- this one is given a very precise statement and interpretation as a law of programming, which must also count as a law of Computer Science. Given that Computer Science draws heavily on such fields as mathematics, logic, linguistics (Chomsky's hierarchy has far more relevance to Computer Science than it does to lingusitics!), electrical engineering etc., it is not surprising that laws in Computer Science should bear similarity to laws in other areas. Lindsay Groves Logic programmers' theme song: "The first cut is the deepest"
ross@ulowell.UUCP (10/01/87)
Oh, that's easy. Stay Alert. Trust no one. Keep your demo ready. Ross -- csnet: ross@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu uucp: ross@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu || ...harvard!ulowell!ross Trust the computer. The computer is your friend.