[tialaramex]

It makes sense that it's a mathematical approach because Computer Science is ultimately a Mathematical discipline, the Church-Turing intuition aligns these machines to mathematics (and I would argue us too, but that's controversial).

Lots of elite CS courses start there, Cambridge did even when I was applying thirty years ago, Oxford does these days (back then it didn't acknowledge CS as a "real" subject, you were basically a mathematician and you'd just be studying this oddly practical sub-discipline of mathematics). Both teach an ML today. The place I studied began with an ML then too (today it begins with Java, which is I think inferior but they get $$$ so...)

My unconsidered guess is that your "begin with booleans" thing just gets to arithmetic via a long winding route, and either as it approaches arithmetic, or just before, it accidentally gets infected with Gödel incompleteness so you are no better off, with the same problems but maybe a greater appreciation of why they were unavoidable, except maybe you're very tired.

[cubefox]

> It makes sense that it's a mathematical approach because Computer Science is ultimately a Mathematical discipline

The fact that the abstraction "logical circuits" is much closer to actual computers than any "mathematical" or "functional" abstraction casts doubt on this claim.

[082349872349872]

"Computer Science" comes in two flavours, systems and theory. Each of you is talking about a different flavour.

(most CS departments cater to a single flavour: yes, it would be easier for everyone involved if theoretical computer science was called "informatics", but that'd probably be funding-sub-optimal)

[cubefox]

But the logical abstraction is no less theoretical than other abstractions, even if it closer to practice. I don't understand why theoretical computer scientists ignore it.

[goodbyesf]

> The fact that the abstraction "logical circuits" is much closer to actual computers than any "mathematical" or "functional" abstraction casts doubt on this claim.

But 'logical circuits' are abstracted using symbolic logic and boolean algebra which are mathematical disciplines. It's still math.

Also, computer science doesn't necessarily mean computers as we know it today. A 'computer' in computer science is something that can process 'computable numbers'. For example, in Turing's paper, he imagine a person ( computer ) 'doing math' with a pen and paper.

[cubefox]

> But 'logical circuits' are abstracted using symbolic logic and boolean algebra which are mathematical disciplines. It's still math.

Whether logic itself counts as math or something separate from it is contentious. If you do count logic as math, assume I was talking about the rest of mathematics excluding logic.

> Also, computer science doesn't necessarily mean computers as we know it today. A 'computer' in computer science is something that can process 'computable numbers'. For example, in Turing's paper, he imagine a person ( computer ) 'doing math' with a pen and paper.

Yeah, but persons are the opposite of simple and primitive.