

Alan Kay: Is Computer Science an Oxymoron? - parenthesis
http://www.windley.com/archives/2006/02/alan_kay_is_com.shtml

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arakyd
Is anyone interested in Alan's point? He knows that computer science is a
math. Computer science is to computer engineering (including programming) as
theoretical physics is to experimental physics. The problem is that computer
scientists haven't done anything relevant to 95% of computer engineering for
decades, and computer engineers apparently stopped reading the computer
scientists even before that.

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tlrobinson
_"I'd like to welcome you to this course on Computer Science. Actually that's
a terrible way to start. Computer science is a terrible name for this
business. First of all, it's not a science. It might be engineering or it
might be art. We'll actually see that computer so-called science actually has
a lot in common with magic. We will see that in this course. So it's not a
science. It's also not really very much about computers. And it's not about
computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle
accelerators. And biology is not really about microscopes and petri dishes.
And it's not about computers in the same sense that geometry is not really
about using a surveying instruments."_

From Abelson in the first SICP lecture:
[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-
sussma...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-
lectures/)

~~~
13ren
“Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about
telescopes.” - Dijkstra

~~~
nwinter
"... but they don't call it telescope science." - unknown

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orib
Computer science is _not_ a science. It is a math.

Science is the attempt to find counterexamples to disprove your ideas on how a
given system behaves. It involves conducting experiments to give input data
for constructing a model, and then trying to find corner cases that break the
model and allow you to refine or otherwise rework your model until it accounts
for all your data.

Computer science has none of this. Computer science is the art of coming up
with definitions that are of use to solving certain classes of problems, with
formalisms to back them up. That is math.

~~~
schtog
Sure math only allows deductive proofs but without induction how would people
ever get to the proof? Mathematicians do hypothesises and experiments too. I'm
sure mathematics is regarded as science.

~~~
orib
Induction isn't the core of it. The idea is that you try to find
counterexamples in science, and you _don't_ have proofs in the general sense.
Ever. The best you can say is that "If I guessed right, then I have math that
worked out." Nothing more. Mathematics allows a definite "This is a solution
that exists to this problem.". In Science, you can say that a solution exists
to a problem, but that's not the tricky part -- the tricky part is figuring
out the right problem to solve.

Science is effectively an attempt to reverse engineer the universe. Imagine
that you were given a clock by a client. A very ornate clock that he doesn't
want you to take apart. Then he tells you he wants you to make schematics for
the clock so precise he could put together a precise functional duplicate. But
you're not allowed to take it apart.

I would say that does not that count as mathematics, although mathematics
would certainly have a use as a tool to prove that the behavior is correct in
all observed respects. But you could probably find a new minute difference in
the way the hand moves, and that would blast all your carefully crafted
mathematics to bits.

I'm not slagging on mathematics, and I'm not trying to glorify science and say
that one is a more powerful superset of the other.

They're both very useful and very tightly intertwined disciplines, but they're
also very different. In a way, you could say that math is the study of solving
problems, and science is the study of finding physically meaningful problems.

------
iamwil
"PowerPoint is a terrible idea because it takes everything interesting about
what computers can do and brings it into an expensive form of paper. Alan now
jumps into a demo of the system he’s using that isn’t PowerPoint. He draws a
car and then animates it with a script. This is based on what children do with
his system, Squeak. "

I found that tidbit interesting. The thing is, when you invent new things, you
need some type of metaphor for what already exists, or people will have a hard
time adopting it or using it.

