Let Go, Standard Library From Community

[Dan]

Jascha Wetzel <[firstname]@mainia.de> Wrote:

> hm, how about...
> why is problem X undecidable?
> why does solving problem Y take at least O(...) time/space?
> why are some problems NP and others P or aren't they?
> why do these weights and activation functions make a recursive neural
> network X do what it does?
> 
> "software engineering" is clearly a large subset, but you would have to
> stretch the term pretty much to make most theoretical CS fit in there.
> 
> Don Clugston wrote:
> > Jascha Wetzel wrote:
> >> the german name of this subject is more appropriate.
> >> "informatik" suggests the science of information.
> > 
> > It's better -- works well for most business apps, but it's a bit of a
> > stretch for things like games.
> > IMHO, "software engineering" is a much better term.
> > 
> >> just because there are no experiments doesn't mean it's not a science,
> >> though. mathematics is usually considered a science although has no
> >> experiments either. that's because both aren't natural sciences where
> >> there is a given real world complex that we try to understand by
> >> sampling it with experiments.
> > 
> > In science, we're always trying to answer the "why?" question.
> > Mathematics is no exception; that's what proofs are about.(*Why* are
> > there no integral solutions to x^n+y^n=z^n where n>2 ?)
> > But in CS, the question is almost always "how?". While doing CS, you
> > almost never come away with more understanding about how the universe
> > behaves. Most of the actual computer *science*  is done in mathematics
> > departments.

Software Engineering IMHO is the application of the science to solve a given problem.  This is the "how" question he refers to.

Computer Science IMHO is the study of a subset of Mathematics such that we are bound to discrete sets and algorithms; and we have a set of typically consistent objectives, such as minimizing time and space complexity; which other studies in Mathematics don't explicitly define.

On another note, you cannot understand "why" the abstraction is by examining the formula, you can merely understand "what" it is.  

Why can we not understand "why" a formula behaves a certain way?  Because the concept of why is based on the concept of purpose, and the purpose is subset to existence; defined by it's users rather than being a necessary property of something that exists.