E.W.Dijkstra Archive: On the nature of Computing Science (EWD 896)

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2024-12-23 12:30:06

Its official theme: Control Flow and Data flow: Concepts of Distributed Programming only determined the flavour, for regularly we were led to pretty general questions that seem rather central to computing in general. So, what is the nature of computing science, or, perhaps more precisely, what should its nature be?

There is much confusion about that, and that confusion should not amaze us, for computers nowadays have so many different aspects:

The above enumeration is not exhaustive; I leave it to you to design and justify a dominant rôle in computing for the management scientists, the linguists, the experimental physicists and the educationists. This source of confusion about the nature of computing has now been sufficiently explained, so let us turn to the other component: science.

To begin with I would like to recall that Science as a whole has dismally failed to meet its original objectives. As you all remember, those original objectives were three.

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