Computer Science is back!

[PokeParadox]

I remember playing some 3D 3rd person space ship game thing on the Archemedes acorn... then vague memories of RM Nimbuses... School had a Mac at one point too... I had My grandad's Atari 800XL at home then eventually I was able to use his PC and ended up with my own PC... a 486 DX2


The chronological order of these events are open to a bit of shuffling...

 

[Blue Protoman]

My school gives Macbooks to its students. They switched from IBM laptops starting in 2009-2010, and at the time the Macs were brand new.


/thread

 

[moz]

Disgusting Macs, my school is slowly but surely being transferred to macs as well, we already have 2 mac labs, and one of our PC labs are being switched to a Mac lab this year. It makes me cry.

 

[diligentcircle]

Whoever decided on the name "computer science" needs to be punched. There's a big difference between science and engineering. On a related note, whoever came up with the idea that scientists are engineers and started thrwing it around in fiction is even dumber. I can never forget one line in The Powerpuff Girls:

I am a scientist. I invent things!

Classes teaching people how to use programs like Microsoft Word is the stupidest load of bullshit ever shat. What's next, "how to use house cleaning tools"?

 

[Prometheus]

Disgusting Macs, my school is slowly but surely being transferred to macs as well, we already have 2 mac labs, and one of our PC labs are being switched to a Mac lab this year. It makes me cry.

Quite aside from the likely commercial reasons (I don't like this, and I don't think it should be influencing what's in schools), this is probably also due to the lower amount of support/babysitting that's probably needed for maintaining Mac OS X. If managing that stuff was my job, I know what I'd rather be dealing with...

Whoever decided on the name "computer science" needs to be punched. There's a big difference between science and engineering.

But doesn't understanding the workings of something (which is what I gather is key in CS teaching) fall more under the term "science" than "engineering"?

On a related note, whoever came up with the idea that scientists are engineers and started thrwing it around in fiction is even dumber. I can never forget one line in The Powerpuff Girls:

I am a scientist. I invent things!

:lol:

Classes teaching people how to use programs like Microsoft Word is the stupidest load of bullshit ever shat. What's next, "how to use house cleaning tools"?

That's why British kids are finding computing so boring - multiple years of that (I've heard victims of the regime quote anything from three to *ten* years of it!), when it's something so easily picked-up by most people, is enough to put anyone off, I'd imagine.


As for house-cleaning tools... Home economics?

 

[WizardStan]

Whoever decided on the name "computer science" needs to be punched. There's a big difference between science and engineering.

Indeed there are, which is why there are two different degrees at my school, computer science and computer engineering, which cover two different topics.


As a computer scientist, I'm specifically equipped with the tools to analyze inefficiencies in a system and discover new algorithms to combat those inefficiencies. It's not dissimilar from how a scientist might study the effects of certain drugs on people and figure out which are actually effective and if they can be made moreso. A PHD in computer science often results in a new language or paradigm, a different way of writing code.


An engineering course is more focused on the practical, how to take the knowledge gained from the analysis and apply it. They're taught various development structures, how to take domain requirements, and using the tools of the trade to build what it is they are looking for.


An engineer builds a bridge, but a scientist figured out how to make the steel and concrete strong enough to support it. Same idea with computer science vs engineering.


Now, granted, I'm currently working in the capacity of an engineer with only a little science thrown in, but that's because the market for computer scientists is pretty much non-existent. It's there, computer scientists are out there experimenting with AI, image processing, all that fun stuff, they're mostly in research labs and schools being staffed by professors and phd students, not much someone already out of school can do. Game designers frequently do computer science work to improve their games graphics or gameplay and I would love to get in on one of those teams one day, but competition is extremely fierce. My dream would be to one day point to a game being played and say "see how that guy dodged around your bullet, hid behind that building, and came out when you were distracted? I'm the one who figured out how to make them intelligent enough to do that" *pride*


Anywho, I'm sure the point I was trying to make before I distracted myself was that computer science and computer engineering are two different things, unfortunately a lot of people use computer science as a blanket statement for anyone working on computers.

 

[moxie]

Thank you, WizardStan. Now I didn't have to write that

 

[Blue Protoman]

Disgusting Macs, my school is slowly but surely being transferred to macs as well, we already have 2 mac labs, and one of our PC labs are being switched to a Mac lab this year. It makes me cry.

Then do something about it! I'm putting together a presentation for my principal to have my school's Macs switched to Linux, which I will present at the end of the year when my workload is down. My arguments will rely on student complaints, the freedom (in price) of Linux and its software, the similarities between the Mac software we most commonly use (Microsoft Office, Photoshop, etc.) and the Linux substitutes (LibreOffice, GIMP/GIMPshop, etc.), and the fact that the only money we'd have to spend to make the transition would be some Linux training, which would be cheaper in the long run than purchasing the new versions of all this software each year. I'm also throwing in some reform for policies, like allowing students to submit a form to get a certain program approved for installation, and having it be a relatively smooth process.

 

[craigix]

My school replaced the BBCs with Macs. That was all we ever had in terms of new tech, the black and white macs with the tiny screen, oh and 4 colour ones which were mostly for the staff (I bet they cost about £3k each at the time!).


I never saw a PC at school, the Amiga still seemed way more advanced than the Macs, I don't even think the Macs could multitask.

 

[kojack]

the Amiga still seemed way more advanced than the Macs, I don't even think the Macs could multitask.

Macs didn't get preemptive multitasking until Mac OS 9 (but all old software still ran in cooperative multitasking, where programs had to manually yield the cpu otherwise nothing else would run). The amiga had preemptive multitasking 14 years before that. Win NT 3.1 had it as well, 6 years before the mac.


My school had apple 2e's for teaching basic as part of the grade 12 maths subject. Not much use to me, I was doing C, E, Amos and assembly on my amiga at home, and had been coding since grade 5.

 

[diligentcircle]

As a computer scientist, I'm specifically equipped with the tools to analyze inefficiencies in a system and discover new algorithms to combat those inefficiencies. It's not dissimilar from how a scientist might study the effects of certain drugs on people and figure out which are actually effective and if they can be made moreso. A PHD in computer science often results in a new language or paradigm, a different way of writing code.

Science is the study of how the natural world works. Programming and artificial intelligence have very little to do with the natural world and they can't be "studied" the way the natural world can be. You're relating it to medicine, but medicine's relation to science is the study of effects of drugs on humans (and other animals).


A programmer is an engineer, not a scientist. Discovering how to create better programs is not science. It's innovation. There's a huge difference between the two. Science is learning about the natural world. Engineering is creating and/or innovating technology. "Computer science" isn't about learning, it's about creating and innovating.

 

[WizardStan]

Ok, in the definition that science is the study of the natural world, you are correct. My argument, then, would be that the word is outdated from a time when it was impossible to conceive of, and study, much beyond the natural world: the important aspects of science being study and experimentation resulting in new knowledge, a new definition would be those inclusive of whether it was natural or artifical environments.


Other definitions I've found are simply "knowledge gained by systematic study" with no mention of physical or natural, so at the very least some dictionaries agree with me.

 

[diligentcircle]

Ok, in the definition that science is the study of the natural world, you are correct. My argument, then, would be that the word is outdated from a time when it was impossible to conceive of, and study, much beyond the natural world: the important aspects of science being study and experimentation resulting in new knowledge, a new definition would be those inclusive of whether it was natural or artifical environments.


Other definitions I've found are simply "knowledge gained by systematic study" with no mention of physical or natural, so at the very least some dictionaries agree with me.

You misunderstand me. Let me explain from a different angle. If it's possible for humans to "study" technology like scientists study the natural world and actually benefit from it, it means one of two things:


1. The person in question is learning engineering techniques by looking at existing technology. In this case, if you call it "science", you also have to apply "science" to other simple learning by individuals, i.e. school.


2. Humanity as a whole does not understand the technology (i.e. no living person(s) or written document(s) can explain it), in which case it's probably fair to call it "science".


However, "computer science" is not study. "Computer scientists" don't try to get to a greater understanding of how computers work. They try to find ways to improve software. This is innovation, which is engineering, not science.

 

[vuurrobin]

"Computer scientists" don't try to get to a greater understanding of hw computers work.

Gaining greater knowledge of how existing technology works isn't science. Science is about gaining new knowledge and it isn't new if its already applied by engineers in current technology. But that doesn't mean that computer science doesn't exists. A computer scientist tries to represent (parts of) the 'real world' in a mathmatical or logical system (even if that part is a mathmatical or logical system in itself). It started with representing simple mathmatical calculations using logic gates. That could be used to create the first computers that could calculate simple math stuff.


In the current day and age scientists are doing research in fundamentally different ways a computer can work (somebody had to find out that you can increase the performance of computers using CPUs with more that 1 core), finding better ways to solve problems (somebody had to figure out heapsort that always takes O(N log(N)) for its operations), finding algoritms to mimic behaviour from the real world (like mimicing flocks of birds or schools of fish using a flocking algorithm), finding new programming languages that allows us to better utilise computer resources (there is currently alot of research going on about (functional) programming languages that can automaticly be run on multiple cores) and probably a dozen of other areas.


I should tell you that my knowledge is limited and that I could be wrong.

 

[WizardStan]

I think I understand the dilemma now. Indeed, I see where you are coming from. There is a difference between the research that goes into computer "science" and the design that is computer engineering, however, and say what you will, I don't think it is fair to lump the two together as "engineering". There still needs to be some distinction.


I've thought about this a bit, and I think vuurrobin was just starting to touch on my thoughts here: what if, instead of computer "science", it were computer "mathematics"? Both deal in theorems and lemmas built from well understood basic principles, and progress is made by finding unique ways of applying those into new properties and solving problems. Thoughts?

 

[diligentcircle]

I think I understand the dilemma now. Indeed, I see where you are coming from. There is a difference between the research that goes into computer "science" and the design that is computer engineering, however, and say what you will, I don't think it is fair to lump the two together as "engineering". There still needs to be some distinction.


I've thought about this a bit, and I think vuurrobin was just starting to touch on my thoughts here: what if, instead of computer "science", it were computer "mathematics"? Both deal in theorems and lemmas built from well understood basic principles, and progress is made by finding unique ways of applying those into new properties and solving problems. Thoughts?

I agree with you here completely.

 

[craigix]

Seeing as I recently read that more people now take Latin than CS, let's just be happy it's back in one form or another.

 

[Alec]

Wikipedia has an interesting discussion of this:


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer science#Name_of_the_field

Renowned computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra once stated: "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." The design and deployment of computers and computer systems is generally considered the province of disciplines other than computer science. For example, the study of computer hardware is usually considered part of computer engineering, while the study of commercial computer systems and their deployment is often called information technology or information systems. However, there has been much cross-fertilization of ideas between the various computer-related disciplines. Computer science research also often intersects other disciplines, such as philosophy, cognitive science, linguistics, mathematics, physics, statistics, and logic.

Computer science is considered by some to have a much closer relationship with mathematics than many scientific disciplines, with some observers saying that computing is a mathematical science. [...]


The relationship between computer science and software engineering is a contentious issue, which is further muddied by disputes over what the term "software engineering" means, and how computer science is defined. David Parnas, taking a cue from the relationship between other engineering and science disciplines, has claimed that the principal focus of computer science is studying the properties of computation in general, while the principal focus of software engineering is the design of specific computations to achieve practical goals, making the two separate but complementary disciplines.

 

[Prometheus]

Seeing as I recently read that more people now take Latin than CS, let's just be happy it's back in one form or another.

... There are no words...

 

[Blue Protoman]

Wait, your message is not clear, Prometheus. What are your thoughts of Craig's statement exactly?