Re: Any research putting c above ada?

[T Wheeley <tw104@york.ac.uk>]

On 15 May 1997, Jon S Anthony wrote:

> > > > "We're teaching Computer Science here.  If you want engineering, go to
> > > > an engineering school."  That's the prevailing attitude with many of the
> > > > CompSci programs at small liberal arts colleges.  They teach the
> > > > "science" of programming almost as a subfield of Mathematics.  The
> > > 
> > > This is actually very apropos to the problem.  Most of what passes as
> > > so called "computer science" is just watered down mathematics -
> > > discrete mathematics (asymptotic algorithm analysis is fundamentally
> > > various techniques of counting, i.e., a bit of combinatorics) and some
> > > bits of formal logics (which is where the oft mentioned "halting
> > > problem" and such comes from.)  Take this away and you don't have much
> > > left - unless you have the _application_ of that mathematics, i.e.,
> > > software engineering.
> > > 
> > > Well, there is the AI camp, but there too, if you look at what much of
> > > this is, it's being/been covered by philosophers and CogScis (and
> > > often with rather more perspicacity).
> > 
> > Well then let's not bother teaching computer science at all!  Why not just
> 
> Sounds like a good idea to me.

So how do you intend teaching people to use computers then?  Through
osmosis?  Or do you think that computer science is like car mechanics --
bit of experience and you've got it.  After all, we don't need car
mechanics degrees as that'd just be physics and mechanical and electronic
engineering, wouldn't it?

Then again, maybe there's a bit more to computer science; maybe all the
people who design cars went to university to study mechanical and
electronic and even chemical engineering.

> Incorrect analogies.  These are all sciences which have their own core
> subject which is well delineated.  The fact that they borrow from
> ideas in other related sciences is irrelevant.  The point is that CS
> has no such core subject area - _all_ it has is borrowed and then
> watered down from other disciplines.

Of course it is!  CS didn't exist 50 years agao; it had to come from
somewhere -- namely maths and electronics.  All the early computer
scientists were either mathematicians, elec engineers or both.  It is a
developing field, and I would say the core subject area is programming and
algorithm design.  Algorithms are like mechanical parts -- designedby
specialists in that area, with the *aid* of mathematics, not as a part of
maths.

> > The fact is that a CS degree combines all these factors into a single
> > degree related to the study of computers, and puts them in the correct
> > context.
> 
> This would be the start of something that made sense if the core
> subject was _engineering software artifacts_.
> 
> 
> > Yes the idea of dominance in sequences is part of computer science,
> > but they way I was taught it in maths is not particularly relvant to
> > the complexity of algorithms.
> 
> This sounds irrelevant.  _Counting_ is the core of complexity analysis
> and that is a part of Combinatorics.  _Applying_ the various relevant
> results of Combinatorics to _engineering_ problems in software is
> perfectly sensible.  Attempting to dream up new ways of counting or
> more sophisticated ways, or ways that handle new situations or
> whatever is Combinatorics - not CS.

You are repeating what I was saying.  Engineering degrees present Calculus
in the correct manner for Engineering, and so Computer Science presents
Combinatorics in the relevant manner for alg analysis.

> > Unless you have a very good understanding of the principles behind
> > the maths in a maths degree, it will take you a lot of experience to
> > become a good programmer (e.g. Knuth)
> 
> I seriously doubt this (as it is written).  As an example, exactly how
> does understanding the ideas behind the proof of Quadratic Reciprocity
> help you in "programming"??  How does an understanding of the topology

Most people doing a maths degree, especially in the early stages, will not
know the principles well enough to extend them to and Ada program, for
example.  We are taught these things as how it is done, but thinking up
`how it is done' is difficult.

> of the linear continuum needed to understand a proof of the FTC help
> you in "programming"?  As far as that goes, how does a understanding
> of the notions underlying FTC help?  Schroder-Bernstein theorem?  No
> other engineering discipline needs this sort of understanding.  Heck,
> no other _science_ needs this level of understanding.

Your name-dropping is very impressive.  I am truly humbled.

> > Of course there is a strong element of theory in CS degrees -- they want
> > to get good research students to boost the department's standing against
> > other universities, but you would have to have a poor department or be a
> > poor student if you didn't pick up some of the fundamentals of good
> > software design.
> 
> I think you just crossed over into Jay Martin flamage land - prepare
> to be blow torched! :-)

I will stand by that paragraph as being self-evident.

:sb)