🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BxGBsJ.8qG@unx.sas.com> sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
>
>In article <1992Nov9.005241.29492@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>, pratt@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU (Vaughan R. Pratt) writes:
>
>|> To me computer science is about four interactions: information and
>|> time, computation and communication, models and reality, and
>|> perspective and users.  Discreteness is neither emphasized nor
>|> deemphasized in this view, the integers and the reals are both
>|> important in CS.
>
>Do you see CS as having any immediate empirical content in the
>manner of physics, chemistry, biology, etc.?  If so, could you
>describe this a bit?  (I concede that "immediate empirical
>content" is not very precise, but I think we know what is 
>intended.)  It seems pretty clear that given your view of the
>nature of CS, it really has nothing to do with actual physical
>machines, but rather more properly deals with "machines" in the
>logical (mathematical) sense (Turing machines, for example).
>
>Your view of CS is a coherent one, but I'm not sure
>how widely received it would be.  Simply as a matter of your
>own personal opinion, do you think this view is widely shared
>(in both academia and industry), or do you offer it rather along

This is a source of contention in CS where many academics have followed
such savants as Hoare in insisting  that the objects of interest in CS
are certain mathematical objects, while others consider CS to be
concerned with the study of computing devices and their programs. 
In my very humble opinion, the work informed by the first view is generally
rather trivial from both mathematical and engineering perspectives.




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