Développer / Develop

Communications of the ACM, Vol. 56, No. 5, May 2013 Peter J. Denning, editor-in-chief of Ubiquity, makes the case that computer science is indeed a “science” and that it is fundamentally distinct from any of the STEM fields. As Denning points out, how we define “computer science” matters for educators, researchers and practitioners. When it comes to education, for example, viewing computer science as a “science” will elevate it in any discussion of funding priorities for building a competitive IT workforce. When it comes to the workplace itself, it means that computer scientists will be seen as genuine collaborators with reliable predictive models and valuable analytic tools, rather than just as professional coders. Denning points out that two external factors – the rise of computational science and the discovery of natural information processes - have spawned a science renaissance in computing. Experimental methods have regained their stature because they are the only way to un...