When I think of "Computer Science" I definitely think that it respects "build great things from a small set of first principles" as much as any field. In fact,

When I think of "Computer Science" I definitely think that it respects "build great things from a small set of first principles" as much as any field. In fact, I might argue that CS is just a subset of pure math. It's those pesky Computer Engineering concerns, warts like memory locality and branch prediction, that make CS "less pure" than it could have been :) [no offense to CE, I personally love those warts] > most people just remember or know the skills set of the abstraction layer without ever understanding how that abstraction comes into the field in the first place This sounds like you're describing pragmatic software development, or "software engineering" if you insist on sounding fancy. My degree was in SE and in retrospect I would have enjoyed CS more, but it really didn't matter in the long run. But I digress... the point is: a course that focuses on using an abstraction is a programming/SE course, whereas a course that focuses on the principles one might use to build such an abstraction is a CS course.