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I think the distinction is useful as it stands. Given that a lot of computer "science" is an applied "science" (I use scare quotes deliberately because I think

by gdp 17y ago

I think the distinction is useful as it stands. Given that a lot of computer "science" is an applied "science" (I use scare quotes deliberately because I think some of the "science" content is dubious), the "theoretical" distinction makes it obvious that you're talking about a theory of computer science, not the application of those theoretical concepts to create things. > It is my experience that people in casual conversations automatically assume topic to be complexity theory, despite I'm in Europe. What one community decides to define itself as isn't really a concern of mine. I'm also in Europe and I've found that "theoretical computer science" is pretty widely understood to mean the kinds of things I'm arguing that it means. > It would be a bit like calling category theory a "theoretical mathematics" So why would it make any more sense to apply it to complexity theory? It's not like work on languages, semantics or logic are any more "applied" than complexity.

slackenerny 17y ago
What one community decides to define itself as isn't really a concern of mine. Ehh, then I won't be able to convince you that it's not true that what you called crazy view on TCS is in fact common view. Not that I was able to do that anyways; I'm not that eloquent. Amichail said SPJ is not member of that community and that's perfectly true. You opted to that on ontological grounds. Fine. I've shown that leaders of CS theory in US doesn't give a flip about that ontology and just mind their own business. TCS community is fragmented in two disjoint ways. Why T in TCS then at all? Maybe because most of people are not linguists and doesn't care. Mathematicians for example doesn't care at all about naming. Most common path of least action is just call the thing by the surname of whomever was loudest shouting about it. They rightly assume it's just irrelevant anyways even if troublesome at times. By the Arnol'd principle name almost never reflects of who actually made the discovery anyways and the rest of msthematics' ontology and semantics is horrendous, http://cornellmath.wordpress.com/2007/07/12/unfortunate-mathematical-names/ http://cornellmath.wordpress.com/2007/07/12/unfortunate-math.... I can perfectly imagine category theory being more relevant to programming than resolving PvsNP. Conversely TCS is about computation and computability and rest are further abstractions, so this can be argued any way one wants.
- gdp 17y ago
  > Amichail said SPJ is not member of that community and that's perfectly true. My argument was that it is impossible to exclude SPJ from any sensible definition of "theoretical computer science", unless you are taking those words and re-defining them to mean something other than what they actually mean as a collection of words. I accept that there may be a group of people who call what they do "theoretical computer science", and who believe that nothing else is "theoretical computer science", but in that case, the onus is on those people to remember to translate "theoretical computer science" as a term into "complexity theory" when they talk to people outside the complexity theory community, because the rest of us have a much stronger claim to the general meaning of the term, which encompasses both this idiosyncratic use of "TCS" as well as all of the other things that it can correctly be taken to mean. Allow me to make my argument entirely concrete: Let's say that I do "organic chemistry" and I go to organic chemistry conferences with other organic chemists. Obviously there are other sub-branches of chemistry. If I decided to stop calling what I do "organic chemistry" and start calling it just "chemistry" instead, to the exclusion of any other kind of chemistry, you can understand why people would be very confused (and probably a little annoyed) when I start telling them that Alfred Nobel wasn't a chemist. I will go even further to say that the test for a sensible definition of "theoretical computer science" is probably which people it includes, and SPJ would probably be on that list, IMHO (along with Hoare and Milner and countless others who are excluded by this supposedly widely-held definition). And I really don't think it's widely-held outside of the community that calls itself the TCS community, which by definition, doesn't make it a "widely held view", does it?
  - slackenerny 17y ago
    impossible to exclude SPJ from any sensible definition of "theoretical computer science" Yes, there is. Vide my last sentence above. Proving that is futile because you want to argue anywas and as I said I'm not that eloquent. Nobody takes away from SPJ of what he is. Edit: you expanded your argument after I wrote above. I don't feel like I have anything useful to say. Not that I felt that in the first place, I just gave a counterexaple showing of how world stands. Next time I'll run into someone I'll first ask what school he attends and who is his advisor instead of arguing about what he semantically meant describing his field. Then it would be evident what he works in and if we have anything to learn from eachother insetad of wasting our both time for idle argument.

by gdp 17y ago

slackenerny 17y ago

What one community decides to define itself as isn't really a concern of mine. Ehh, then I won't be able to convince you that it's not true that what you called crazy view on TCS is in fact common view. Not that I was able to do that anyways; I'm not that eloquent. Amichail said SPJ is not member of that community and that's perfectly true. You opted to that on ontological grounds. Fine. I've shown that leaders of CS theory in US doesn't give a flip about that ontology and just mind their own business. TCS community is fragmented in two disjoint ways. Why T in TCS then at all? Maybe because most of people are not linguists and doesn't care. Mathematicians for example doesn't care at all about naming. Most common path of least action is just call the thing by the surname of whomever was loudest shouting about it. They rightly assume it's just irrelevant anyways even if troublesome at times. By the Arnol'd principle name almost never reflects of who actually made the discovery anyways and the rest of msthematics' ontology and semantics is horrendous, http://cornellmath.wordpress.com/2007/07/12/unfortunate-mathematical-names/ http://cornellmath.wordpress.com/2007/07/12/unfortunate-math.... I can perfectly imagine category theory being more relevant to programming than resolving PvsNP. Conversely TCS is about computation and computability and rest are further abstractions, so this can be argued any way one wants.

gdp 17y ago
> Amichail said SPJ is not member of that community and that's perfectly true. My argument was that it is impossible to exclude SPJ from any sensible definition of "theoretical computer science", unless you are taking those words and re-defining them to mean something other than what they actually mean as a collection of words. I accept that there may be a group of people who call what they do "theoretical computer science", and who believe that nothing else is "theoretical computer science", but in that case, the onus is on those people to remember to translate "theoretical computer science" as a term into "complexity theory" when they talk to people outside the complexity theory community, because the rest of us have a much stronger claim to the general meaning of the term, which encompasses both this idiosyncratic use of "TCS" as well as all of the other things that it can correctly be taken to mean. Allow me to make my argument entirely concrete: Let's say that I do "organic chemistry" and I go to organic chemistry conferences with other organic chemists. Obviously there are other sub-branches of chemistry. If I decided to stop calling what I do "organic chemistry" and start calling it just "chemistry" instead, to the exclusion of any other kind of chemistry, you can understand why people would be very confused (and probably a little annoyed) when I start telling them that Alfred Nobel wasn't a chemist. I will go even further to say that the test for a sensible definition of "theoretical computer science" is probably which people it includes, and SPJ would probably be on that list, IMHO (along with Hoare and Milner and countless others who are excluded by this supposedly widely-held definition). And I really don't think it's widely-held outside of the community that calls itself the TCS community, which by definition, doesn't make it a "widely held view", does it?
- slackenerny 17y ago
  impossible to exclude SPJ from any sensible definition of "theoretical computer science" Yes, there is. Vide my last sentence above. Proving that is futile because you want to argue anywas and as I said I'm not that eloquent. Nobody takes away from SPJ of what he is. Edit: you expanded your argument after I wrote above. I don't feel like I have anything useful to say. Not that I felt that in the first place, I just gave a counterexaple showing of how world stands. Next time I'll run into someone I'll first ask what school he attends and who is his advisor instead of arguing about what he semantically meant describing his field. Then it would be evident what he works in and if we have anything to learn from eachother insetad of wasting our both time for idle argument.