Essay On Computer Science

1288 Words3 Pages

Computer Science is many things: engineering, math, science, art. The field is diverse; from coding robots who can map the bottoms of oceans to animating digital characters for Disney’s next film, computing has immersed itself in virtually every area and concentration of career. The idea of computing itself exists in both the physical and theoretical world, requiring abstract and concrete thinking to fully understand it. But what exactly makes computer science what it is? What specifically makes an profession that has been around for less than a century one of the most integral parts of modern society? The discipline’s definitions, though varied, exemplify how computer science has evolved from an obscure discovery in the 1940s to a now prominent …show more content…

At Boston University, computer science is a unique way to problem solve. Peter Denning claims the field is a true science. For Avi Cohen and Bruria Haberman, computer science is the language of technology. These definitions are varied, but also interconnected. For Peter Denning and Cohen and Haberman, computer science corroborates with the “scientific paradigm,” but for distinctive rationales: one as the embodiment of the use of the scientific method, the other as the embodiment of language. Neither of these views are wrong or even mutually exclusive; one could argue that computer science as a language is just a way to communicate the scientific method in a way that computers understand. To elaborate, scientists often construct systems which implement hypothesized information processes through computers and then correlate them with the real thing [Denning 2005]. This illustrates how computers in these studies are tools to test hypotheses, an essential part to the scientific method. In addition, language could even be seen as the personification of problem solving; without the articulation of issues, and the communication needed to solve them, attempting to settle issues would be inefficient, if not utterly impossible. This is especially true in computer science, where the core of the discipline is to relay and structure information processes, processes that require strict terminology in order to be understood by human or machine [Streubel 2003]. If anything, computer science should be considered, in addition to mathematics, a “language” of

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