4 ms·
Hal Abelson disagrees with you. "Computer Science is a terrible name for this business. First of all, its not a science. It might engineering, or it might be ar
by kylebrown 12y ago
Hal Abelson disagrees with you. "Computer Science is a terrible name for this business. First of all, its not a science. It might engineering, or it might be art. But we'll actually see that computer -- so-called science -- actually has a lot in common with magic."[1]
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQLUPjefuWA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQLUPjefuWA
- cfallin 12y agoAdd to that list Fred Brooks (IBM System/360, Brooks' Law): http://www.cs.unc.edu/~brooks/Toolsmith-CACM.pdf http://www.cs.unc.edu/~brooks/Toolsmith-CACM.pdf Relevant quote: "... the scientist builds in order to study; the engineer studies in order to build. ... I submit that by any reasonable criterion the discipline we call 'computer science' is in fact not a science but a synthetic, an engineering, discipline. We are concerned with making things, be they computers, algorithms, or software systems."
- mikevm 12y agoRobert Sedgewick would disagree with Hal Abelson. Just because some people tend to use pure maths to analyze the run-time of algorithms, doesn't mean we can't apply the scientific method to the problem. Here's a nice presentation by Sedgewick where he shows how we can apply the scientific method to programming: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~rs/talks/ScienceCS10.pdf http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~rs/talks/ScienceCS10.pdf And quote: > Algorithm designer who does not experiment gets lost in abstraction > Software developer who ignores cost risks catastrophic consequences