How I got a CS degree with pen and paper and why I'm doing it again

Re:How I got a CS degree with pen and paper and why I'm doin... by dsp1234 on Wednesday January 27, 2016 @02:06PM (#10982230)

Computer science is not really about computers -- and it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes...and geometry isn't really about using surveying instruments. Now the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments: when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use."

-- Hal Abelson (1986)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How I got a CS degree with pen and paper and why I'm doin... by zura on Wednesday January 27, 2016 @02:51PM (#10982611)

> Computer science is not really about computers

He also added (prepended, to be precise) that it's not a science. :)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How I got a CS degree with pen and paper and why I'm doin... by xixi77 on Wednesday January 27, 2016 @04:46PM (#10983715)

well the answer to that depends on whether in one's language "mathematics" is a "science" -- as I have (to no small surprise) discovered, in English it's quite often not, and there is no really agreed-upon definition of what science is...

[ Parent | on HN ]