On Thursday, 9 June 2016 at 21:54:05 UTC, Jack Stouffer wrote:
On Thursday, 9 June 2016 at 21:46:28 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
Programming is a mix of engineering and craft. There are
people who do research into programming theory, and those are
computer scientists. I'm not one of them. Andrei is.
Unfortunately, the term "software engineer" is a LOT less
popular than "computer scientist".
How so? I only hear people use the term "programmer" or
"informatics".
Computer Science -> pure math / classification / concepts.
Software Engineering -> process of developing software.
At my uni we had the term "informatics" which covers both
comps.sci., software engineering and requirements analysis, human
factors etc. But it IS possible to be a computer scientist and
only know math and no actual programming. Not common, but
possible.
But yes, sometimes people who have not studied compsci, but only
read stuff on wikipedia engage in debates as if they knew the
topic and then the distinction matters. There are things you
never have to explain to a person who knows compsci, but you
almost always have trouble explaining to people who don't know it
(but think they do, because they are programmers and have seen
big-oh notation in documentation).
It is like a car engineering listening to a driver claiming that
you should pour oil on your breaks if they make noise. Or a
mathematician having to explain what infinity entails. At some
point it is easier to just make a distinction between those who
know the fundamental things about how brakes actually are
constructed, and those who know how to drive a car.
The core difference as far as debates goes, is that comp sci is
mostly objective (proofs) and software engineering is highly
subjective (contextual practice).
So, if the topic is compsci then you usually can prove that the
other person is wrong in a step-by-step irrefutable fashion.
Which makes a big difference, actually. People who know compsci
usually think that is ok, because they like to improve their
knowledge and are used to getting things wrong (that's how you
learn). People who don't know compsci usually don't like it
becuase they are being told that they don't know something they
like to think they know (but actually don't and probably never
will).
That's just the truth... ;-)
