I believe that the 'proper' name for the field of Computer Science should no longer be debated. As programmers you all should know that a name is nothing more than a placeholder label for its content. I propose we call Computer Science, Applied Dickronomics, and never speak of this debate again.
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Anonymous2010-09-05 7:27
Computer---so-called-science---actually has a lot in common with magic.
Computer Science is a terrible name for this business. First of all, it’s not a science. It might be engineering, or it might be art… it’s also not really very much about computers.
It’s not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not really about microscopes and petri dishes.
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Anonymous2010-09-10 4:05
>>22
>A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer's idea of a spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at all. However, it is very real. It can perform intellectual work. It can answer questions. It can affect the world by disbursing money at a bank or by controlling a robot arm in a factory. The programs we use to conjure processes are like a sorcerer's spells. They are carefully composed from symbolic expressions in arcane and esoteric programming languages that prescribe the tasks we want our processes to perform.