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Topic: Hackers and Painters (Read 1320 times) |
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amichail
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Hackers and Painters
« on: Oct 5th, 2005, 2:35am » |
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What do you think of this essay?
"...I've never liked the term "computer science." The main reason I don't like it is that there's no such thing. Computer science is a grab bag of tenuously related areas thrown together by an accident of history, like Yugoslavia. At one end you have people who are really mathematicians, but call what they're doing computer science so they can get DARPA grants. In the middle you have people working on something like the natural history of computers-- studying the behavior of algorithms for routing data through networks, for example. And then at the other extreme you have the hackers, who are trying to write interesting software, and for whom computers are just a medium of expression, as concrete is for architects or paint for painters. It's as if mathematicians, physicists, and architects all had to be in the same department.
...Arguably the people in the middle are doing something like an experimental science. But the people at either end, the hackers and the mathematicians, are not actually doing science.
The mathematicians don't seem bothered by this. They happily set to work proving theorems like the other mathematicians over in the math department, and probably soon stop noticing that the building they work in says "computer science" on the outside. But for the hackers this label is a problem. If what they're doing is called science, it makes them feel they ought to be acting scientific. So instead of doing what they really want to do, which is to design beautiful software, hackers in universities and research labs feel they ought to be writing research papers."
http://ideas.web.cse.unsw.edu.au/index.php?module=articles&func=disp lay&ptid=1&aid=497
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towr
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Re: Hackers and Painters
« Reply #1 on: Oct 5th, 2005, 4:27am » |
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The same can be said for many fields of science. Most fields are heterogenic.
Take biology as an example. There are dozens of disciplines. For example Genetics, Molecular Biology, Behavioral science, Biotechnology.
It's somewhat analogous to the three levels of computer science described.
Genetics, Molecular Biology <-> Maths
Behavioral science <-> Behaviour of algorithms
Biotechnology <-> interesting/usefull software
Of course that shouldn't surprise anyone, some algorithms are just like little creatures, and vice versa 
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| « Last Edit: Oct 5th, 2005, 4:31am by towr » |
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Icarus
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Re: Hackers and Painters
« Reply #2 on: Oct 5th, 2005, 2:48pm » |
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Science is study by the scientific method:
1) Make observations
2) Make hypotheses based on the observations
3) Design experiments to test the hypotheses
4) Observe the results of the experiments
5) Refine or (reject and replace) hypotheses based on the observations.
6) Return to step 3.
Most properly the term science should only be applied to disciplines that work by the method above. But it is also traditionally applied to many disciplines that do not operate by the scientific method. Computer science is not alone. The study of mathematics is also called a science, even though it does not operate by the scientific method (at least for the most part - conjectures can be said to be true science, until they are proven). Architecture is also sometimes called a science, as is Engineering.
Rather than being misapplications of the word, however, these fields are all called sciences using an older, broader, meaning of "science", which applies to any disciplined development of knowledge.
The only problem with "computer science" is that unlike the others, no other name for the discipline has yet gained general acceptance, so the "science" is always there to give a false impression.
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