gray@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Cary G. Gray) (11/14/89)
Part of this discussion is degenerating into the longstanding argument over what "computer science" is. Unfortunately, that term is terribly overloaded. I strongly urge those involved in the "is-not" "is-to" argument to carefully read "Computing as a Discipline", the report of the ACM Task Force on the Core of Computer Science. (Abridged versions appeared in the Jan 89 CACM and the Feb 89 Computer.) An outstanding feature of the report is the choice of terminology: not that "computing", not "computer science", appears in the title. Within the broad area of computing, there is science, and there is also engineering. There are also applications that are neither science nor engineering; e.g., much of what is done in commercial information systems. I'm aware of three different things people mean when they say "computer science": - anything done with a computer - "what I do" - the science of computation Only the last is accurate (unless you are, say, Don Knuth, in which the second would also be correct most of the time). We need to be more careful in our use of language in order to avoid this confusion. My personal strategy is to avoid "computer science" whenever possible: I will usually choose "computing" or "computation" for the general sense, and "science of computation" for the narrow. Now, regarding education: there isn't one right answer here. We need both computing scientists and computing engineers. A single course of study is not right for both. Cary Gray gray@cs.stanford.edu
mjl@cs.rit.edu (11/15/89)
In article <1989Nov13.212400.9168@Neon.Stanford.EDU> gray@cs.Stanford.EDU (Cary G. Gray) writes: >I'm aware of three different things people mean when they say "computer >science": > - anything done with a computer > - "what I do" > - the science of computation >Only the last is accurate (unless you are, say, Don Knuth, in which the >second would also be correct most of the time). I assume the times when this doesn't apply to Knuth are when he's concentrating on the "art" of computation, right? :-) Mike Lutz Mike Lutz Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY UUCP: {rutgers,cornell}!rochester!rit!mjl INTERNET: mjlics@ultb.isc.rit.edu