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I M A G E B Y V A L L I A

Forsythe, a former ACM president and one of the founding fathers of computer science education in academia, in 1968 wrote: “The most valuable acquisition in a scientific or technical education are the general-purpose mental tools which remain serviceable for a lifetime. I rate natural language and mathematics as the most important of these tools, and computer science as a third.” 9 Even if both citations are not relative to a school education context, in my view they clearly support the importance of teaching computer science in schools to all students.

However, the wide popularity gained by CT after Wing’s Communications

ICONFESS UPFRONT, thetitleofthis Viewpoint is meant to attract readers’ attention. As a com- puter scientist, I am convinced we need the concept of compu-
tational thinking, interpreted as “being
able to think like a computer scientist
and being able to apply this competence
to every field of human endeavor.”
The focus of this Viewpoint is to dis-
cuss to what extent we need the expres-
sion “computational thinking” (CT). The
term was already known through the
work of Seymour Papert, 13 many com-
putational scientists, 5 and a recent pa-
per15 clarifies both its historical devel-
opment and intellectual roots. After the
widely cited Communications Viewpoint
by Jeannette Wing, 19 and thanks to her
role at NSF, 6 an extensive discussion
opened with hundreds of subsequent
papers dissecting the expression. There
is not yet a commonly agreed definition
of CT—what I consider in this View-
point is whether we really need a defini-
tion and for which goal.

To anticipate the conclusion, we probably need the expression as an instrument, as a shorthand reference to a well-structured concept, but it might be dangerous to insist too much on it and to try to precisely characterize it. It should serve just as a brief explanation of why computer science (or informatics, or computing: I will use these terms interchangeably) is a novel and independent scientific subject and to argue for the need of teaching informatics in schools.

Wing discussed CT to argue it is important every student is taught “how a computer scientist thinks,” 19 which I interpret to mean it is important to teach computer science to every student. From this perspective, what is important is stressing the educational value of informatics for all students— Wing was in line with what other well-known scientists had said earlier; I mention several here.

Donald Knuth, well known by mathematicians and computer scientists, in 1974 wrote: “Actually, a person does not really understand something until he can teach it to a computer.” 10 George

Viewpoint
Do We Really Need
Computational Thinking?
Considering the expression “computational thinking” as an entry point to understand why the fundamental
contribution of computing to science is the shift from solving problems to having problems solved.
DOI: 10.1145/3231587