Re: misconceptions on computer science

From: Alan Gauld (alan.gauld_at_btinternet.com)
Date: 08/05/04 

Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 21:36:26 GMT

On Thu, 05 Aug 2004 15:28:01 GMT, "Shayne Wissler"
<thalesNOSPAM000@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Again I disagree. For example I would argue that CS probably
> > doesn't need to spend much time on testing, but an SE degree
> > would have, I hope, at least an entire semester devoted to it,
> > if not more.
>
> And this furthers your position how?

Basically what I'm saying is that testing is an essential skill
for someone who needs to write good quality code. It is not an
essential skill for someone who only needs to write code that
works most of the time. CS students often write quite buggy
code(*) but it is adequate to demonstrate some aspect of
computing that they are interested in. An SE is expected to write
code that works correctly at least most of the time! Thus a CS
course is not merely about writing code. (Although granted the
aspect oif computing should ultimately result in something from
which another mayt write some code - but that other could be an
SE...)

(*)The software house I work in started out in large part
as a shop for taking graduate level concept code and
productising it...

> > practices are overlapping. Im just saying they have a different
> > focus and priority set.
>
> Right: One is concerned primarily with usefulness and the other is concerned
> primarily with knowledge.

And in this we agree.

> > That scientists often solve problems in ways that cannot e
> > economically realised. The scientist, having solved the problem
> > may well consider that a successful conclusion. An Engineer
> > would consider that a failure.
>
> Or a prototype or proof of concept. He wouldn't necessarily consider it a
> failure.

OK, maybe failure is too strong but its only a step towards a
solution. The scientist may well be happy to move onto a new
challenge having satisfied himself that the "project" was
viable.

> > Of course there is virtue in algorithms for their own sake, just
> > for the art and beauty of their form.
>
> Show me an algorithm that is beautiful but useless.

I'm not a scientist, I'm an engineer. All the algorithms I know
off the top of my head are useful! But I do recall seeing work
to produce a sorting algorithm that would be as inefficient as
possible but still guarantee a result. Now maybe somebody can
find a use for such a thing but the researchers weren't expecting
a queue to form anytime soon. They were just intrigued to see how
inefficient they could go - and to see if anything interesting
came out of their efforts. I don't know the outcome but I know
they spent over 6 months working on it (a team of 3 I think?)

> > goes into things which have no immediate benefit. Consider all
> > the work done on binary number systems, long before anyone
> > thought of applying it to computers. Or the work by Boole on
> > logic, again he had no comcept of applying his work incomputing
> > or electronics, he did it out of curiosity and because he liked
> > the beauty of the results. A lot of pure science is like that.
>
> That wasn't computer science it was mathematics.

I've already said that I agree about the ambiguity between CS and
Math. Most of what we call CS today was taught as Math during the
60's...

> And you can claim they did
> it for beauty, heck, even they could claim that, but if it wasn't really
> about knowledge that it's not valid.

But beauty and knowledge are often closely related, it is beauty
and utility that may not be.
 
> > No they are doing pure science. How they get it funded is another
> > matter, but given a suitable benefactor the research is perfectly
> > legitimate science.
>
> If you want to further your position you're going to have to come up with
> examples.

I thought I'd given several.

> > > > So what about the guys who invented the first machines?
> > > Like Babbage? He was an engineer of course.
> >
> > He was because he was trying to build a machine.
>
> That did something useful.

Of course, he was an engineer. No question.

> > I'm thinking about people like Turing and his contemporaries
> > who were trying to think about what would happen *if* they hasd
> > such a machine. (Turing of course was a mathematician and would
> > never have claimed to be a scientist, but his work falls into wat
> > today would be considered CS).
>
> What specific thing that Turing did are you talking about? And why do you
> think that engineers can't think about the implications of a machine they
> might construct?

The obvious one is the Turing test. It is a thought experiment.
Turing never seriously tried to build a machine that would pass
the test. I'm not even sure he seriously expected one to be
built.

> > And although Turing et al eventually got to try to build their
> > machine it took a war to provide the funding. They had been
> > working on the concepts long before that.
>
> Non sequitor. Babbage worked on his machine's design long before he got the
> funding too.

But he was always intending to build it. Turing and his
colleagues never really expected to build their dream machnines.
Even in the war what they built was very specific and not very
much like the machines they were dreaming of.

> > No, they are researching the future. Maybe someday we will have
> > such machines. Indeed much of what they envisaged in the 70's has
> > come to pass. This is the nature of science.
>
> Examples please.

Fingerprint/Iris recognition systems, natural speech recognition
real-time image manipulation, virtual reality systems.

Some of these existed in rudimentary form on very expensive
mainframe machines but practical realisation was a pipedream.

Some of it still is: think about HAL in 2001 Space Odyssy. We are
still quite a long way from building a HAL.

> > the imagination of an engineer who takes the idea in a different
> > direction, it is still worthwhile IMHO.

Not a great example, but what about Berners-Lee and what he did
with markup languages (specifically SGML) and the internet to
crate the web? Now SGML wasn't a pipe dream solution (although
some might argue about that!) but it gives an example of a
technology that wasn't going very far very fast suddenly
finding a major role. And of course SGML wasn't really a CS
discovery either! :-)

If I dredge up a better one I'll post it...

Alan g.
Author of the Learn to Program website
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld

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