[Apocryphon]

Computer science was a fraud. It always had been. It was the only branch of science ever named after a gadget. He and his colleagues were basically no better than gizmo freaks. Now physics, that was true science. Nobody ever called physics “lever science” or “billiard ball science.”

The fatal error in computer science was that it modeled complex systems without truly understanding them. Computers simulated complexity. You might know more or less what was likely to happen. But the causes remained unclear. - Bruce Sterling, The Zenith Angle

[kleer001]

> named after a gadget

I disagree.

Firstly "computer" used to mean the people that did computations, so, that untethers computation from the material doing those computations. And secondly, if you buy into the philosophy of it, computation is all around us, binds us in a way like the force in Star Wars.

[JadeNB]

> Firstly "computer" used to mean the people that did computations, so, that untethers computation from the material doing those computations.

But it is called computer science, who / whatever is doing the computation, not computation science, so I'm not sure that (either part of) your response applies.

Actually, I disagree with the grandparent (hence, I suppose, with Sterling) differently: I think that it's rather common to name sciences after gadgets, depending on how flexible you are about what is called 'science'. The first example that came to mind, just because I have a colleague who works on it, is cryo-electon microscopy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryo-electron_microscopy). It's fair to argue whether that's really a 'science' as opposed to just a 'technique', but I'm confident that there are other examples that are more clearly 'sciences'.

[angersock]

The fatal error in computer science was that it modeled complex systems without truly understanding them."

And yet, mechanical, civil, chemical, and electrical engineers have made great strides without such understanding, in fields where it is truly impossible to fully understand or model the forces at work, the materials in play, the structures in shape, or the physics in motion.

They manage to get by on approximations, so that's not it.

[abecedarius]

Nobody ever called physics “lever science”

Mechanics?

[Intermernet]

Political Science and Social Science seem to be more spurious than Computer Science. At least areas of computer science deal with physics and / or mathematics (Electron tunneling, dielectric effect etc.)

I agree that the term is used too broadly. I don't regard myself as a "Computer Scientist". I'd argue that "Software Engineer" is another term that is too loosely applied, although it does have a definition.

[_kst_]

"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." -- Edsger W. Dijkstra (origin disputed)

[rodgerd]

Yeah, well, astronomers don't call it telescope science.

[dragonwriter]

> The fatal error in computer science was that it modeled complex systems without truly understanding them.

Its a nice quote, but science is all about modeling complex systems as a way of understanding them...arguably, human "understanding" of systems is just modeling of them.

[wiggumz]

In other words, the science part is bogus. It should be called Computing Studies. That way they could keep the acronym CS which everyone seems to like.

Computer science is about as useful a term as polymorphism (borrowed from biology). It serves to put lipstick on a pig.