[OT] Re: Input handling? (newbie alert!)

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Tuesday, September 14, 2010 10:41:53 Ali Çehreli wrote:
> bearophile wrote:
>  > I think the term "Informatics" is better than "Computer Science" for
>  > this field we are talking about
> 
> On a related note, "programmers" are called "software engineers" in the
> US, at least in Silicon Valley.

Well, software engineers are programmers, but programmers aren't necessarily 
software engineers - just like there is a software engineering major in addition 
to computer science. Their focus is different.

>  > "Computer Science" is mostly misleading, both words don't fit very well
>  > with what this field is.
> 
> Agreed. About programming, I am pretty convinced that it is a craft more
> than anything else.

I believe that the idea is that computer science is the study of computers - 
like how political science is the study of politics. However, computer science 
only covers the software side of things, isn't entirely tied to a computer, and 
is really more like math or engineering (though when you focus on the 
engineering side of things, you start straying into software engineering rather 
than computer science) rather than science, since (aside from debugging) it 
really has nothing to do with the scientific method. So, while the basic idea 
behind the name is solid, it doesn't really fit very well when you get down to 
the details.

- Jonathan M Davis