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Web development is a subset of "software engineering". Computer science is not software engineering. It also is not a science and, arguably, is not really abou

Web development is a subset of "software engineering". Computer science is not software engineering. It also is not a science and, arguably, is not really about computers. Software engineering isn't really much of an engineering profession, for that matter. Grumble.

tybris 17y ago
Computer Science is just science at the start. We know a couple of things like Shannon's theorem and Amdahl's law, but that's about it. Unfortunately a lot of experimental computer engineering is also being sold as computer science.
- camccann 17y ago
  "Science" is, loosely speaking, a process for formulating and evaluating predictive models of the behavior of systems with unknown characteristics, based on empirical observation. Theoretical "computer science" is, most of the time, a matter of building abstractions from smaller concepts and making analytical, not empirical, observations of the characteristics of those abstractions. This is much closer to what is generally thought of as "abstract mathematics". The closest you're likely to get to scientific methodology when programming is when you have to write test code to figure out what the crap this freaking third-party library you're stuck with is actually doing because clearly it isn't what the documentation says it should and... at which point we've moved away from "computer science" and into why "software engineering" is such an embarrassment compared to real engineering disciplines. If you want to hear someone smarter than myself expound similar ideas, look up some of E. W. Dijkstra's work--the man was a genius, a "computer scientist" par excellence, and he expected software engineers to act like engineers.
- eru 17y ago
  > [...] but that's about it. Ever opened a book by Knuth? Or heard of Turing and his machines? Or lambda calculus? (Though one may argue that theoretical computer science is a part of mathematics, and not a natural science.)
vgurgov 17y ago
+1 For me webdev is absolutely SE, although ething is based on CS of course.
dkersten 17y ago
Its not about "computers" but rather about "computation".

tybris 17y ago

Computer Science is just science at the start. We know a couple of things like Shannon's theorem and Amdahl's law, but that's about it. Unfortunately a lot of experimental computer engineering is also being sold as computer science.

camccann 17y ago
"Science" is, loosely speaking, a process for formulating and evaluating predictive models of the behavior of systems with unknown characteristics, based on empirical observation. Theoretical "computer science" is, most of the time, a matter of building abstractions from smaller concepts and making analytical, not empirical, observations of the characteristics of those abstractions. This is much closer to what is generally thought of as "abstract mathematics". The closest you're likely to get to scientific methodology when programming is when you have to write test code to figure out what the crap this freaking third-party library you're stuck with is actually doing because clearly it isn't what the documentation says it should and... at which point we've moved away from "computer science" and into why "software engineering" is such an embarrassment compared to real engineering disciplines. If you want to hear someone smarter than myself expound similar ideas, look up some of E. W. Dijkstra's work--the man was a genius, a "computer scientist" par excellence, and he expected software engineers to act like engineers.
eru 17y ago
> [...] but that's about it. Ever opened a book by Knuth? Or heard of Turing and his machines? Or lambda calculus? (Though one may argue that theoretical computer science is a part of mathematics, and not a natural science.)

vgurgov 17y ago

+1 For me webdev is absolutely SE, although ething is based on CS of course.

dkersten 17y ago

Its not about "computers" but rather about "computation".