| First of all, you're a brave man going after Dijkstra. Even two decades in the ground he's still going to win this argument. The domain of astronomy is the starry sky and the Universe it reveals. The domain of surgery is anatomy, physiology, metabolism. In Informatics (not everyone calls it "Computer science", eh?) the domain is formal systems. In each case the instruments (telescope, scalpel, digital computer) are not the main focus of investigation, they are tools, not the domain of study. > the computer is the central figure This is precisely the misunderstanding that Dijkstra tilted against. > can you think of ANY other tool that represents CS? Yes. The human brain. I'll leave you with another joke, one of my favorite, although I don't know who said it, "Computer science could be called the post-Turing decline in the study of formal systems." |
I think you mistake my using the term "computer" for the machine that everybody is using nowadays--but that is just an instance of the Class of computers. The ultimate goal of formal systems is making better Class of computers that should solve real-world problems more efficiently (any other formal systems digression into logic and linguistics always boomerangs back to machines).
Consider how Bayesian probability was looked down upon for decades before computers became powerful enough to reveal how the academic world was wrong about dismissing it--big names from the Frequentist school, just like EDK is in CS....
Even if you still disagree--which you will--there is no denying the fact that not using technology when you ARE an expert in the said technologies is rather odd, and perhaps a bit silly. Have you seen astronomers shunning mathematics? Math is a tool that simplifies a great deal of issues not ordinarily possible with a "naked" mind. So does the computer (as an instance of the computer Class); that someone did not even want to use a typewriter let alone a computer is bewildering to me.