What is computer science?

Topics (6/03/23)

As Claudio Mirolo sug­gests in the docu­ment “Qual è la natu­ra del­l’in­for­ma­ti­ca?”, under­stan­ding the disci­pli­ne that you want to teach is essen­tial to con­si­der the epi­ste­mo­lo­gi­cal and phi­lo­so­phi­cal deba­te about its natu­re, in order to beco­me more aware of the rich­ness and arti­cu­la­tion of our discipline.

Therefore, the fir­st sug­ge­sted rea­ding is Mirolo’s text, which pro­vi­des an over­view of this deba­te. The docu­ment by Mirolo offers nume­rous ideas; we will focus on two of the­se docu­men­ts, which are listed here:

Domande

  • What is the natu­re of com­pu­ter scien­ce accor­ding to you?
  • What distin­gui­shes it (or does not distin­guish it) from mathe­ma­tics and engineering?
  • How could under­stan­ding the natu­re of com­pu­ter scien­ce influen­ce your teaching?

If you have time, but it is not neces­sa­ry for the les­son, I also sug­ge­st this document:

Material for the future 

A very long but inte­re­sting docu­ment con­tai­ning ideas from resear­chers such as Aho, Ullman, Kleinberg, Papadimitriou, Sussman, and many others, con­tains the pro­cee­dings of a work­shop on the natu­re of com­pu­ter science:

A docu­ment that I have not yet had the cou­ra­ge to face (938 pages, work in pro­gress!) is the trea­ti­se on Philosophy of Computer Science by Rapaport:

  • William J. Rapaport. Philosophy of Computer Science. 2004–2020.
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