[tedmiston]

Related: "Is Computer Science Science?" https://www.cs.mtu.edu/~john/jenning.pdf

> What is your profession?

Computer science.

> Oh? Is that a science?

Sure, it is the science of information processes and their interactions with the world.

> I’ll accept that what you do is technology; but not science. Science deals with fundamental laws of nature. Computers are manmade. Their principles come from other fields such as physics and electronics engineering.

...

[jcoffland]

Science is manmade and man is of nature.

It's true that most programmers do not do computer science but CS as a science does exist. CS is the study of data structures and algorithms. CS can be viewed as a branch of mathematics but it is much more process oriented than most math disciplines.

[Atheros]

If aliens ever land they're going to have the exact same sorting algorithms we have. Their history of CPUs will be the same as ours.

[jcoffland]

Unless they have quantum computers or something completely different that we have not thought of. There's a good chance that our conception of computer science, or even science for that mater, is completely unique in the universe, like a snowflake. Science is merely a model humans use to understand the world around them, with limited success.

[njonsson]

Unless they chose the ternary path. It’s closer to base e and therefore closer to optimal than binary.