通过

What Is Computer Science All About

  • 项目

One of the big questions that comes up time and again is “what is computer science all about?” Get a bunch of computer science people in a room and you’ll get almost as many answers as there are computer science people.I don’t have what I think of as a great answer myself. Since I ran into a number of pithy statements on the subject lately I thought I would bring the question to my blog audience.  I was reading a blog post by Rob Miles last week and came across this quote:

[…] try to get a feel for programming and what it is all about. A clue: it is not really mathematics, it is more about organization.

I do believe that organization is a key piece of computer science in general and hugely important in programming. That is one reason why I believe so many boys take so long to get their code right – they are not used to planning and organization.

Eugene Wallingford linked to a tweet by Lance Fortnow that also relates.

image

Now obviously he should be using Bing to do his Internet searching but that aside he has a good point. Over on Facebook where I put this question Dave Klappholz replies.

image

If only there wasn’t as much controversy over what computational thinking is as there is over computer science. Those are all comments by computer science faculty members who teach at the university level BTW. Smart people – real computer scientists. I did a search on Bing for "what is computer science all about" and there were 32 replies – most of which look really useful. Wikipedia says

“Computer science or computing science (abbreviated CS) is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems”

Reasonable but boring. And not quite a one liner for high school students. Do you discuss what computer science is? What do you tell your students? What do they tell you?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2011
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2011
    it is a complicate science that brings people miracles and convenience, even eeficiency.

  • Anonymous
    March 11, 2011
    When people ask what my degree was in, I tell them it is Computer Science.  When I do this I like to watch their eyes glaze over as they nod as if they understand CS to be some dark and secret force that is being used to control the world.  They also usually move the conversation on to other things and don't ask anymore questions.

  • Anonymous
    March 22, 2011
    Is it a must to have done Physics or physical sciences to be able to do computer science.