[paulolc]

This is Science. Computer Science. From one of the greatest alive.

"This is a preliminary version of a book. If you have any comments to make or questions to ask about it, please contact me by email. But when you do, include the version date. I expect there are many minor errors in this version. (I hope there are no major ones.) Anyone who is the first to report any error will be thanked in the book. If you find an error, please include in your email your name as you wish it to appear as well as the version date."

[fithisux]

People often mistake software engineering, or IT with computer science.

Those are not science.

[nickpsecurity]

The main exception might be high-assurance systems. They require clear description of requirements, formal specification of design + goals, proof one embodies the other, test cases that show it empirically, replication by third parties, and hostile review (pentesting) of all of that.

Praxis’ method was a practical application of these concepts used in industry:

https://www.anthonyhall.org/Correctness_by_Construction.pdf

If the design is the hypothesis, would you count that as science?

[jimbob45]

Is computer science even science? It feels like we should have called ourselves computationally-applied mathematicians.

[jasonhong]

Funny you ask this question, since yesterday there was a HN post about Herbert Simon.

Here is Allen Newell, Alan Perlis, and Herbert Simon's response (1967) to your question about whether computer science is even science. For context, the three of them are Turing Award winners and early pioneers of computer science. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~choset/whatiscs.html

Professors of computer science are often asked: "Is there such a thing as computer science, and if there is, what is it?" The questions have a simple answer:

Wherever there are phenomena, there can be a science to describe and explain those phenomena. Thus, the simplest (and correct) answer to "What is botany?" is, "Botany is the study of plants." And zoology is the study of animals, astronomy the study of stars, and so on. Phenomena breed sciences.

There are computers. Ergo, computer science is the study of computers. The phenomena surrounding computers are varied, complex, rich. It remains only to answer the objections posed by many skeptics.

...

[pjmlp]

It is a side effect on how it is called in US and some other english speaking coutries I guess.

What people in US call computer science, in Portugal is a math degree major, mostly called something like Computing Applied Maths.

Computer related degrees are called Informatics Engineering, where computer science subjects are mixed with software engineering content, the degree is certficied by Engineerings Order, and is protected professional title.

Or you have Business Informatics, more tailored to current software being used in companies with little theory, more focused in management stuff.

[gpderetta]

Very similar in Italy as well, where the math side is just called Informatics and the engineering side Informatics Engineering. The former is typically part of the hard maths department, the latter of Engineering. There is significant overlap of course, and both degrees allow being professionally certified by the Engineering Order.

[andyferris]

It’s as much a science as mathematical physics, I would suppose? You can make predictions (scaling of an algorithm, correctness of a concurrent algorithm) and test them empirically.

Some people might call pure math a “science”, but this is at the very least applied math (ie more connected to physical reality than pure math).

[mrkeen]

You could, but this book doesn't, as far as I've skimmed.

It even makes the case as to why not:

> This usually means that there are an enormous number of possible executions, and testing can examine only a tiny fraction of them.

[jazzyjackson]

I like to call it non-material science :) Sure call it math, but studying information and computation gets into what is logically or combinatorically possible, the nature of chaos and symmetry. not just a little system of manmade manipulable symbols.

[Zambyte]

I'm reminded of the first lecture in SICP[0] :)

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY

[Ar-Curunir]

There are plenty of parts of CS that qualify as a science, like HCI, empirical aspects of networking and systems research, empirical parts of ML, etc.

[deterministic]

You are right. It should be called Computation.

[dekhn]

Computer science is not a science; it's a form of math (which is not science).