Science Memes

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submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Depends. A proper computer science course is basically math with machines. At the highest level, it may have zero programming at all, and the machines in question are entirely abstract.

Software Engineering is, well, engineering (setting aside the whole debate on what makes a "real" engineer).

It used to be that universities crammed both under "computer science", and you had to look at the curriculum to figure out which one they were actually teaching. They tend to separate the two more clearly these days. Neither is really "science" in the strictest sense, but the term stuck now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (4 children)

math with machines

so computer engineering?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

No, the machines tend to be abstract. Such as an infinite paper tape that can manipulate symbols.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That experiment must be ludicrously expensive

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

This just in: theoretical physicists are not scientists.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

No, computer engineering tends to focus more on hardware. When I was doing that kind of thing in college, computer engineering did things like chip design and logic boards and so on. I had courses on DSP and VLSI, multiple assembly languages, RISC vs CISC systems, and so on. In my university, it was considered a subspecializqtion of electrical engineering, with the first two years of undergraduate study being identical.

When I switched over to CS, I was doing things like numerical analysis and software systems architecture.

Both majors used math, but CE (as an EE major) required students to go through (iirc) calculus 5, and I think that CS majors could stop at calc 3 but would end up having to do different kinds of math after that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

No, that's machines with math

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Think of it more like programming without electricity.