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No, that's not even remotely an accurate analogy. Computer science is a branch of applied mathematics; not a physical science. Engineers need to have a basic un

No, that's not even remotely an accurate analogy. Computer science is a branch of applied mathematics; not a physical science. Engineers need to have a basic understanding of core physics principles in order to do good work. That analogy doesn't hold with respect to programming and CS. A better analogy is that CS is to programming as number theory is to arithmetic: a person doesn't have to know what a "field" is in order to compute 2+2, or to be able to solve incredibly complex computing problems in general.

SixSigma 13y ago
That's the problem with analogies, they are analogies.
- Iftheshoefits 13y ago
  There are good analogies and bad analogies, though. Good ones use relationships that actually have common elements that are meaningful; that's how they work to convey information.
sparkie 13y ago
Mathematics is a branch of applied Computer Science
visarga 13y ago
I'd split Computer Science in two - the basic stuff and the cutting edge. While most CS graduates have the former, they are ignorant of the latter, unless they read up research papers. It is good to have a foundation, and coding alone doesn't give it, hence the need to learn basic CS, but probably nobody can keep up with the cutting edge of it, being so vast and dynamic.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > I'd split Computer Science in two - the basic stuff and the cutting edge. While most CS graduates have the former, they are ignorant of the latter, unless they read up research papers. That's pretty much true of graduates in any field of science, not just computer science. A BS is a fine grounding in the basics of a field, getting a grip on -- usually some slice of -- the cutting edge is something you do by reading current research in the field.
randomsearch 13y ago
> Computer science is a branch of applied mathematics; not a physical science I would disagree. Whilst CS did originally branch from mathematics, nowadays it is an interdisciplinary subject and to call it a branch of applied maths would exclude huge areas of CS such as HCI.

SixSigma 13y ago

That's the problem with analogies, they are analogies.

Iftheshoefits 13y ago
There are good analogies and bad analogies, though. Good ones use relationships that actually have common elements that are meaningful; that's how they work to convey information.

sparkie 13y ago

Mathematics is a branch of applied Computer Science

visarga 13y ago

I'd split Computer Science in two - the basic stuff and the cutting edge. While most CS graduates have the former, they are ignorant of the latter, unless they read up research papers. It is good to have a foundation, and coding alone doesn't give it, hence the need to learn basic CS, but probably nobody can keep up with the cutting edge of it, being so vast and dynamic.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> I'd split Computer Science in two - the basic stuff and the cutting edge. While most CS graduates have the former, they are ignorant of the latter, unless they read up research papers. That's pretty much true of graduates in any field of science, not just computer science. A BS is a fine grounding in the basics of a field, getting a grip on -- usually some slice of -- the cutting edge is something you do by reading current research in the field.

randomsearch 13y ago

> Computer science is a branch of applied mathematics; not a physical science I would disagree. Whilst CS did originally branch from mathematics, nowadays it is an interdisciplinary subject and to call it a branch of applied maths would exclude huge areas of CS such as HCI.