Vviewpoints
DOI: 10.1145/2447976.2447988
Viewpoint
the science in
Computer science

Computer sCienCe has for de- cades been ripped by an old saw: Any field that calls itself a science, cannot be science. The implied criticisms that we lack substance or hawk dubious results have been repeatedly refuted. And yet the criticism keeps coming up in contexts that matter to us.

It comes up in education in the debates about encouraging more student involvement in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Many critics see computer science mainly as technology or math. Will computer science be excluded because it is not seen as genuine science?

IllustratIon by gra Ph Icgeoff/ shutterstock.com

It comes up in research in debates about the predictive power of our analytic tools. In some subfields, such as storage management, performance prediction, and algorithms, experimental methods have led to reliable predictive models. In others, such as system safety and security, we lack predictive models and we can only speculate that experimental methods will lead to understanding. In his first ACM president’s letter, Vint Cerf asks why software engineering does not rely more on experimental science (Communications, Oct. 2012). In so doing, he echoes a lament uncovered in a 1995 study of software engineering literature. 10 Do enough of us know the experimental methods needed to do this consistently well?

In interdisciplinary collaboration, it comes up when teams are formed and

when credit is handed out. Why are computer scientists still often seen as professional coders rather than genuine collaborators?

My purpose here is to review the history of the question, “Is computing science?” and point to new answers that can help educators, researchers, and collaborators.

I use the term “computing” to refer
to the set of related fields that deal with
computation. These include computer
science, computational science, infor-
mation science, computer engineering,
and software engineering. Interesting-
ly, I have encountered less skepticism
to the claim that “computing is science”
than to “computer science is science.”

 

a Short history of Science in Computing Computing has been deeply involved in science since the beginning. A science vision pervaded the field through the 1950s, and then faded as technology development drew most of our energy through the 1980s. A science renaissance began in the 1990s, propelled by