Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!pacbell!ames!umd5!uvaarpa!mcnc!decvax!dartvax!eleazar!hugo
From: hugo@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU (Peter Su)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: What is CS? (Was re First languages)
Message-ID: <8496@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 31 Mar 88 13:28:01 GMT
References: <4022@ames.arpa> <2400002@otter.HP.COM> <932@its63b.ed.ac.uk> <1982@ho95e.ATT.COM> <1000@mcgill-vision.UUCP>
Reply-To: hugo@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU (Peter Su)
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Lines: 26

In article <1000@mcgill-vision.UUCP> mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse) writes:
>It seems to me that the Computer Science curriculum should teach
>Computer Science.  The art of programming does not seem to me to be a
>part of Computer Science; it belongs somewhere else (software
>engineering maybe?).  This is not to say that CS students shouldn't be
>taught any programming, but rather that we should not pretend that
>programming is really part of CS proper.
>

It seems to me that programming is an intimate part of computer science, if for no
other reason than it provides a vehicle for experimentally testing theoretical
results.  Historically, CS has always been a multifacited area, containing both
theory and practice.  I think that's what makes it more interesting than other
fields (like say, Math) that only provide one view of the world.

Rememer, one of the great works written about computer science was called "The Art
of Computer Programming."  What made it great what the fact that it containted a
mix of programming, mathematics and neat ideas in the field of algorithms.

Pete

-- 
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