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I'm fairly certain it's this, given the history of CS and programming. It started as a branch of mathematics. As an academic field, even in the 1980s/1990s an
by electronvolt 12y ago
I'm fairly certain it's this, given the history of CS and programming. It started as a branch of mathematics. As an academic field, even in the 1980s/1990s and in some places today, it was/is taught as a branch of math. And comparatively, programming/operating computers was not high prestige and was seen more as grunt work.
Interestingly, in some ways the people in Bell Labs were right: the mathematics is what objectively /lasts/. Consider: how much mathematics from the 1950s is still in use and relevant, versus how much written code is still in use and relevant? Mathematics (and algorithms, etc.) have a permanency to them that simply written programs don't.
- zezantam 12y agoI think there's more nuance to thinking about 'what lasts'. Yes, it might not be the same code in use, but the work from the 1950s in CS lives on by being built upon in the code nowadays. The form of the output changes with time but the lessons persist.
- RickHull 12y ago> Consider: how much mathematics from the 1950s is still in use and relevant, versus how much written code is still in use and relevant? This is the wrong question. CS isn't hardly about code. Most of our CS today is from before the 1950s.
- electronvolt 12y agoYou're correct that CS isn't about code. Programming is, and that's what I was drawing the comparison with. Most of the CS we have from pre-1950 is fundamentally mathematics: algorithms, theory of computation, etc.