Theodore H. Smith wrote:
>> On 28-Feb-08, at 3:34 PM, Theodore H. Smith wrote:
>>
>>> That makes no sense... To learn a "chemical" would take forever
>>> too...
>>>
>>> It's simply because they wanted to make their field sound legitimate,
>>> because they felt insecure about their status as "real scientists".
>> No .. that's "social sciences" :)
>
> Because? You happen to be a programmer and don't like the idea of
> losing that word "science" from what you do?
Aye carumba. Why is this even an issue?!
Look at Wikipedia. It states:
Computer science (or computing science) is the study of the theoretical
foundations of information and computation and their implementation and
application in computer systems.[1][2][3] Computer science has many
sub-fields; some emphasize the computation of specific results (such as
computer graphics), while others relate to properties of computational
problems (such as computational complexity theory). Still others focus
on the challenges in implementing computations. For example, programming
language theory studies approaches to describing computations, while
computer programming applies specific programming languages to solve
specific computational problems. A further subfield, human-computer
interaction, focuses on the challenges in making computers and
computations useful, usable and universally accessible to people.
************
Or, to paraphrase a quote I found, "A computer is to computer science
what a telescope is to Astronomy."
The people that actually work on new implementations of algorithms, the
people working on finding new ways of getting a computer in a car to
drive itself, play chess beyond the skill of the best human, and
understand what you're saying into your telephone so the nice people at
the NSA don't have to pay people to do it, those people are scientists.
The article also seems to address your specific complaint further on,
just after Mr. Feynman's famous quote from Lectures on Computation.
Please, go take a look, and let's not just keep offering more arguments
here or it's just going to get into a series of "HERE'S WHAT IT IS!"
followed by, "You're just afraid to acknowledge that people who don't
have your degree can do the same thing...", and eventually someone is
going to need asbestos underwear and people will start stepping in to
tell everyone else to shut up and someone will take their bat and ball
and stomp home with their feelings hurt.
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