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"Computer science" is NOT science. Good science is rarely done outside of machine performance issues. How to organize information to be best "digested" by human
by tabtab 7y ago
"Computer science" is NOT science. Good science is rarely done outside of machine performance issues. How to organize information to be best "digested" by human programmers and users is largely in the realm of psychology and physiology, which are "soft" sciences because we don't really know how the human brain works yet.
I've been in long debates about this and stand by it. Somebody once challenged a "pro science" claimer to "prove" that go-to's are objectively worse than nested blocks. The science claimers failed to produce objective evidence. (Background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful, see the part about Edsger Dijkstra's paper.)
(I'm not saying goto's are good, only that my preference for blocks is subjective. For one, nested blocks can be indented which makes their structure more visual. Goto's don't have a visual counterpart, at least not without a fancy IDE.)
- anta40 7y agoSo what's CS, then? Probably a mix of applied math+engineering?
- tabtab 7y agoPhysical engineering is more objective. For example, in designing a bridge an engineer is sandwiched between the architect's illustration and the laws of physics. Bridges can't fall. There are various "gut instinct" design choices to select among, but it's a smaller pool of choices than that of a software architect.