3 ms·

Well then, so much for it being Computer Science...

• alecbenzer 9y ago
  As-is, CS really is much closer to a branch of mathematics than a science.
  • andrewflnr 9y ago
    Eh, in a similar way to how theoretical physics is mostly math. Math is the tool you're using, but the assumptions are all based on real-world observations.
    • alecbenzer 9y ago
      I don't know about that; real world observations like what?
      • andrewflnr 9y ago
        Like observations of what can and can't be computed by physical objects. The point of the Church-Turing thesis is that things you prove about Turing machines are proofs about what you can compute in the real world, not just some abstract mathematical model.
• dahart 9y ago
  Since computers are built by people for people, it does seem like we're missing the most important and difficult science in favor of doing the science that's easy to do. It's easy to reason about how a system that I designed will perform. It's hard to answer the questions of how our technology choices affect other people. It would be great if science could help us design high quality systems with a limited budget, or establish a theory around whether designing any given system will improve someone's life. It would be pretty dang useful if we had some formal scientific results around what makes a game fun, or more generally what makes software pleasant to use and productive.
  • mmirate 9y ago
    > establish a theory around whether designing any given system will improve someone's life That would be sociology or one of its siblings, no? ... or, at best, the piddly "ethics" course that gets tacked on to most undergraduate CS degree programs?