Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!sun-barr!newstop!sun!regenmeister!chrisp
From: chrisp@regenmeister.uucp (Chris Prael)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: CS education [engineering, mathematics, and computer science]
Message-ID: <34818@regenmeister.uucp>
Date: 22 Nov 89 22:02:49 GMT
References: <2608@fai.UUCP>
Sender: chrisp@regenmeister (Chris Prael)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Mtn View, CA
Lines: 56

From article <2608@fai.UUCP>, by kurtl@fai.UUCP (Kurt Luoto):
> I would also mention computability and complexity
> theory and numerical analysis as branches of mathematics which are
> fundamental to computing in general.

1. Numerical analysis is as fundamental to computing as is tax
computation or pay check printing.  No more and no less.  Numerical
analysis is an application.

2. Computability is a topic of numerical analysis.  A part of an
application.

3. Complexity theory is math?  Perhaps.

> I would guess that the majority of computing practitioners,
> which includes programmers, software engineers, etc,
> use relatively little mathematics on a daily basis.

Quite true, and for good reason.

> By the same token, most of the daily routine of other professions
> probably includes little of the practitioner's specific training
> in that profession.  

You might want to question a structural engineer (such as my wife), a
lawyer (related to a number of those), or an M.D. (various friends).
You would find that your assertion is false in those cases.

>(For example, I'd like to know how much of
> a senior physicist's time is devoted to actually "doing physics"
> rather than writing grant proposals, supervising grad students
> or junior physicists, filling out purchase orders, fighting
> political battles within and without his department, etc.)

Not a functional example.  Perhaps even a disfunctional example.
Physics is not a profession, it is a field of study.  Interestingly, the
same is true of mathematics.  It is not a profession, it is a field of
study.  In your example, the "senior physicist"'s profession appears to
be that of teaching physics.  

> But that is not to say that there is no content to these fields
> of study.  Nor does it mean that the practitioner can safely
> ignore studying the fundamentals of his field.

Very true.  But first, one must accurately identify the fundamentals of
the field.  The most basic problem in computing for 25 years is and has
been a consistent misidentification of the fundamentals of computing.
 
> Pet peeve: I hate the term "computer science", but it seems that
> we will be stuck with it for some time to come.

I can enthusiastically second you in this one.  Note the other fields
that are labeled ... science: political science, health science,
military science.

Chris Prael