[3pt14159]

Not OP, but I agree with them.

The word computer means multiple things. In one sense it the abstraction of universal computation. Imagine a world where actual physical computers didn't progress to universal computation, but were stuck being purpose built to the present day. The field of computer science would be utterly different because they couldn't actually compute anything with their science. They could just discuss computability in an abstract sense. It'd be like physics without the particle colliders or telescopes or lasers.

I think of the founders of computer science more like the founding fathers of America, rather than a single guy named Turing, but some are more memorable than others.

[mr_toad]

> Imagine a world where actual physical computers didn't progress to universal computation, but were stuck being purpose built

It’s not clear that you need a theory of computation to build a stored process computer. You might not clearly understand the theoretical capability of such a machine , but that wouldn’t prevent you from doing many useful things with it.

[KingOfCoders]

The article writes about your point of general computation and purpose built computers:

"Likewise, Konrad Zuse never got a Turing award despite having created the world's first working programmable general computer 1935-41. [...] It was pointed out that none of the computers built during the 1940s were influenced in any way by Turing's 1936 theoretical paper, [...]"