By the way; I liked what Knuth had to say about the term "Computer Science". Paraphrasing, he said, "We wouldn't call surgery 'knife science'."

Thanks for that quote. I'd never heard of that article of Knuth's. I've just skimmed it but will be going back later to read it properly.

I have always been a "computer science" sceptic, as I've expounded on at length here several times over the past years: Re: How do you view programming, Re: (OT) Programming as a craft, Re: Programming is more like:.

My experience is that each new generation of CS majors come out of college, their heads filled -- by life-long, theoretical computer scientists (aka. professors) -- with idealistic notions of how to use science to produce perfect programs.

Then they encounter the real world where they are expected to complete tasks easily as complex as their year long college projects --- using messy real-world data on messy real-world systems with messy real-world languages and tool-sets -- in a few weeks. And for the most part, they forget all the nice theories and knuckle down to doing the job.

Those that don't either go back into academia, or write blogs.

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

In reply to Re^5: An exploration of higher-level-language approaches to the "First all-zero row in an NxN matrix" problem (goto Considered Harmful) by BrowserUk
in thread An exploration of higher-level-language approaches to the "First all-zero row in an NxN matrix" problem (goto Considered Harmful) by davido

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