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CS doesn't. At least not in any useful way. Systems Analysis and Knowledge Engineering typically assume corporate/industrial philosophies and goals. Broader h

CS doesn't. At least not in any useful way. Systems Analysis and Knowledge Engineering typically assume corporate/industrial philosophies and goals. Broader human considerations - political, social, cultural - are very peripheral in CS. They get some token attention but they're always subservient to business values. The idea that software is primarily about human relations of all kinds is novel and rather subversive.

the_af 4y ago
> "They get some token attention but they're always subservient to business values" Hard disagree. CS education doesn't have business at its core, but science. It's all about systems design, theory, formal verification, requirements gathering, math, logic, etc. It's neither about (primarily) business nor coding concerns. You probably don't need CS for those.
- dagw 4y ago
  Isn't the core problem that universities have started offering far too much under the "Computer Science" umbrella. If they where to split it up into 5 or 6 different degrees, like Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Human Computer Interaction, Business Systems design etc. then many of these problems of definition and meaning would disappear.
  - the_af 4y ago
    Definitely, multiple unrelated things are being "sold" as CS.
- bmitc 4y ago
  Computer science is not a science. Computer science typically bounces between mathematics and engineering, with some unique aspects of its own. But it definitely isn't a science, which typically needs a loop of hypothesis, observations, and theory.
  - the_af 4y ago
    > Computer science is not a science That's a narrower argument that the one I wanted to make, which was that CS is not programming; it's theory/research/practice more like the traditional sciences. Whether it's a science or not is not as clear-cut as you claim [1]. There is argument about this, like about many things claiming to be "science". Here's a relevant quote from Wikipedia, attributed to Newell and Simon: > "Computer science is an empirical discipline. We would have called it an experimental science, but like astronomy, economics, and geology, some of its unique forms of observation and experience do not fit a narrow stereotype of the experimental method. Nonetheless, they are experiments. Each new machine that is built is an experiment. Actually constructing the machine poses a question to nature; and we listen for the answer by observing the machine in operation and analyzing it by all analytical and measurement means available." This does seem to leave out the more "mathy" part of CS, which isn't about building machines at all. For the record, I think CS is science. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science

the_af 4y ago

> "They get some token attention but they're always subservient to business values" Hard disagree. CS education doesn't have business at its core, but science. It's all about systems design, theory, formal verification, requirements gathering, math, logic, etc. It's neither about (primarily) business nor coding concerns. You probably don't need CS for those.

dagw 4y ago
Isn't the core problem that universities have started offering far too much under the "Computer Science" umbrella. If they where to split it up into 5 or 6 different degrees, like Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Human Computer Interaction, Business Systems design etc. then many of these problems of definition and meaning would disappear.
- the_af 4y ago
  Definitely, multiple unrelated things are being "sold" as CS.
bmitc 4y ago
Computer science is not a science. Computer science typically bounces between mathematics and engineering, with some unique aspects of its own. But it definitely isn't a science, which typically needs a loop of hypothesis, observations, and theory.
- the_af 4y ago
  > Computer science is not a science That's a narrower argument that the one I wanted to make, which was that CS is not programming; it's theory/research/practice more like the traditional sciences. Whether it's a science or not is not as clear-cut as you claim [1]. There is argument about this, like about many things claiming to be "science". Here's a relevant quote from Wikipedia, attributed to Newell and Simon: > "Computer science is an empirical discipline. We would have called it an experimental science, but like astronomy, economics, and geology, some of its unique forms of observation and experience do not fit a narrow stereotype of the experimental method. Nonetheless, they are experiments. Each new machine that is built is an experiment. Actually constructing the machine poses a question to nature; and we listen for the answer by observing the machine in operation and analyzing it by all analytical and measurement means available." This does seem to leave out the more "mathy" part of CS, which isn't about building machines at all. For the record, I think CS is science. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science