jgn@nvuxr (Joe Niederberger) (11/28/89)
This is from the book "Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective" by Edsger W. Dijkstra, Springer-Verlag 1982. "To imagine the teaching of a discipline of programming as a science requires some imagination. Any effort to teach programming while disguising its intrinsic mathematical nature is doomed to failure, but we shall have to teach a discipline of programming in a way that differs from the average way in which mathematics is taught today. The problem with today's mathematical curricula is that mathematical *results* are published and taught quite openly, but how mathematics is *done* is not published, nor taught explicity, and the student must pick it up by osmosis, so top speak." He's not saying that mathematical studies are *applicable* to a discipline of programming (or software engineering, if you prefer,) but that such a discipline *is* mathematics. I happen to agree. So, to me, the question of whether calculus, or abstract algebra, or what-have-you, is relevant to software engineering, is somewhat like asking whether playing baseball is relevant to skiing. In a sense, no. But in another sense, if you enjoy one, you very possibly might enjoy the other; keeping physically fit by doing either certainly helps all around; skills developed doing one may find unexpected application in doing the other, etc. etc. etc. Peace, Joe Niederberger