🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BxGAvC.7Lo@unx.sas.com> sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
   I don't have a problem with this.  But notice that it makes
   CS a subdiscipline of mathematics -- and it still lacks significant
   distinguishing features of the genuine sciences.  

It still appears that the problem is with you stating or implying too
strong a constraint on what the "genuine" sciences are.

   It also suggests that there is (or ought to be) a distinction between
   CS and software engineering along the lines of the distinction
   between (say) applied (or even pure) mathematics and civil
   engineering.  But this does not seem to be the case.  And it isn't
   obvious that it should be.

Any of these distinctions are somewhat arbitrary.  I once had a
conversation with my ex-wife's uncle, trying to explain to him what
software engineering was.  He was a chemical engineer for Dow for about
five hundred years, so I started out by saying that SE was to computer
science as chemical engineering was to chemistry.  This opened the
proverbial can of worms.

Sci.logic isn't the place for the controversy, but just as in chemical
engineering vs. chemistry, there are techniques and methods that apply
to software engineering that are *used* in computer science, and
(naturally) methods and techniques from computer science that must be
used by software engineers.

As to whether they *should* be separate: of course not.  All software
engineers know that computer science is a subdiscipline of software
engineering. 
--
		Charles R. Martin/(Charlie)/martinc@cs.unc.edu
     Dept. of Computer Science/CB #3175 UNC-CH/Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175
	    3611 University Dr #13M/Durham, NC 27707/(919) 419 1754
     "Oh God, please help me be civil in tongue, pure in thought, and able
      to resist the temptation to laugh uncontrollably.  Amen." -- Rob T