Is Computer Science, Science
osmanazmat Debates about whether [computer science is] science or engineering can. . . be counterproductive, since we clearly are both, neither, and more (mathematics is so much a part of what [it is]. . . . [Freeman, 1995, 27, my italics] In a classic paper from 1976 [Newell and Simon, 1976], Newell and Simon updated their earlier characterization. Instead of saying that computer science is the science of computers and algorithms, they now said that it is the “empirical” “study of the phenomena surrounding computers”, “not just the hardware, but the programmed, living machine”. (Cf. [Abrahams, 1987, 472]: “Computer science focuses, not on the properties of particular computers, but on the properties of computers in general. It goes beyond the study of computers as objects to, at least, the study of computers as active agents”). This may not sound too different from what Newell and Simon said when they were writing with Perlis nine years earlier, but there are some interesting diff...
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