Computer science should be called logic

(youtube.com)

1 points | by learningstud 22 hours ago

3 comments

  • learningstud 22 hours ago
    At the very end of the video, the speaker quipped that computer science is not just about computers and an actual science doesn't have "science" in its name. The development of programming languages, compilers, SMT/MILP solvers, type theories, and proof assistants allude to the true nature of computer science, i.e., logic and its automation. It can be argued that computer science is even more fundamental than math, e.g., recursion/complexity, intuitionism/constructivism, linear logic, homotopy type theory.
    • beardyw 21 hours ago
      > It can be argued that computer science is even more fundamental than math

      Perhaps "touches on more fundamental concepts than". Otherwise the fact it has the word "computer" in it and being only decades old makes being fundamental hard to support.

  • voidhorse 22 hours ago
    Computation is a sibling (or maybe child) of logic, it is not a superset of logic. I like Wadler a lot and get that the Curry-Howard isomorphism makes it tempting to view them as the same thing, but logic is field of far vaster proportions and history. I think "computer science" is properly called computability theory.

    The proposal in the HN title is a bit like saying "calculus should be called mathematics".

  • ultra-boss 22 hours ago
    We can apply logic to anything and everything. What makes computer science singularly deserving of this label?
    • learningstud 22 hours ago
      Computer science studies and invents logic whereas the math community has departed from logic as a whole.
      • voidhorse 22 hours ago
        I would say that the working, active logicians study and invent logics, not the computer scientists, who work with the narrower field of objects known as models of computation.