From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Dan Cross Message-Id: <200106121412.KAA04138@augusta.math.psu.edu> To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] Re: the 'science' in computer science In-Reply-To: <0cc301c0f2c0$78949560$e8b7c6d4@SOMA> References: Cc: Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 10:12:33 -0400 Topicbox-Message-UUID: b5fa514a-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 In article <0cc301c0f2c0$78949560$e8b7c6d4@SOMA> you write: >nonsense. physics is a science. i can predict things with it. I can predict things with computer science as well: the average and worst-case running times of an algorithm, for instance, or the amount of memory used by activation records in a recursive algorithm. >does computer science predict anything for me? i'll give you that >it does have an axiom that states: > > you will be plagued by bugs in any development effort This is a software engineering maxim. Speaking of which.... There are ``laws'' of software engineering that are kind of like laws of physics. Add more programmers to a late project, and it gets later; etc. >but that doesn't really predict anything in anything that vaguely >approaches a _law_ of physics -- pick one. eg. the prohibition >of speeds greater than the of speed of light. The Church-Turing thesis; NP-complete problems; the halting problem, just to name a few. >comp sci is more like an engineering discipline with very few >fundamentals. Maybe, but that wasn't even my point. - Dan C.