4 ms·

CS is a tricky term, in that it is actually (mostly applied) math, and math ain't science...

• jlarocco 15y ago
  Sorry to go off on a tangent, but this has always bugged me. I wish there were better standardization on CS degrees. Depending on the school, CS can be part of the math department, science department, engineering department, or a liberal arts department. My school grouped it in science/engineering and required a bunch of math, and quite a few science classes. I've met people with the same degree from other schools who think it's crazy I took so much science and are surprised I had so few liberal arts classes. It'd be nice if everybody were on the same page.
  • tincholio 15y ago
    For me, it was an engineering track (the actual degree is in Computing Engineering), and we did have basic science courses as well. The 'real' CS stuff though, was mostly math and logic (algorithms, language theory, semantics, complexity theory and so on), but there were more engineering-like courses as well (operating systems, networking, computer architectures, etc).
• lurker17 15y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics#Mathematics_as_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics#Mathematics_as_sci...
• geebee 15y ago
  I tend to agree, math is closely related to science, but it isn't science. A theorem and proof is different from a hypothesis and test (a hypothesis and test is generally what I would consider to be the "scientific method"). But "scientist" has a folk meaning. If you ask "is math science?", I'd say no. But if you ask "how many scientists are in congress?" and count someone with a math PhD as a "scientist", I'd have no problem with it.