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The same thing can be said about "computer science", perhaps to an even greater degree. Anyone who comes even remotely close to performing CS almost certainly

The same thing can be said about "computer science", perhaps to an even greater degree. Anyone who comes even remotely close to performing CS almost certainly isn't using anything resembling the scientific method, and the difference between engineering and applied CS is blurry to say the least. Maybe the vast majority of us are just programmers making the internet go.

bee_rider 5y ago
Calling it a science does seem to have been an odd decision. It looks more like a branch of mathematics, from the outside at least. Engineering... I dunno. The digital realm doesn't seem, to me, to have enough of a split between "design" and "actual device," so we can't really split the job into the engineer's task and the manufacturer/builder/etc. One annoying thing about this the whole "software engineering" discussion is that often casts the engineers as gatekeeping or being snooty and not wanting to include the programmers. It just seems like a different type of job, though, still perfectly respectable and decently prestigious. Nobody gets angry that we can't be called "Software Chefs" or "Software Conductors."
- drewcoo 5y ago
  > It looks more like a branch of mathematics, from the outside at least. It was a branch of mathematics! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science
bitwize 5y ago
> Anyone who comes even remotely close to performing CS almost certainly isn't using anything resembling the scientific method, and the difference between engineering and applied CS is blurry to say the least. Actually that's one of the things Sussman noted about modern software development: that you have to "perform basic science" on your framework and library code by running experiments, rather than building up things from first principles. So maybe computer science will become a science, after all!

bee_rider 5y ago

Calling it a science does seem to have been an odd decision. It looks more like a branch of mathematics, from the outside at least. Engineering... I dunno. The digital realm doesn't seem, to me, to have enough of a split between "design" and "actual device," so we can't really split the job into the engineer's task and the manufacturer/builder/etc. One annoying thing about this the whole "software engineering" discussion is that often casts the engineers as gatekeeping or being snooty and not wanting to include the programmers. It just seems like a different type of job, though, still perfectly respectable and decently prestigious. Nobody gets angry that we can't be called "Software Chefs" or "Software Conductors."

drewcoo 5y ago
> It looks more like a branch of mathematics, from the outside at least. It was a branch of mathematics! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science

bitwize 5y ago

> Anyone who comes even remotely close to performing CS almost certainly isn't using anything resembling the scientific method, and the difference between engineering and applied CS is blurry to say the least. Actually that's one of the things Sussman noted about modern software development: that you have to "perform basic science" on your framework and library code by running experiments, rather than building up things from first principles. So maybe computer science will become a science, after all!