Some things that fall under Computer Science like Artificial Intelligence seem to be more about theory than learning to programming—whether that counts as “Science” is a question of semantics, but when I was learning about pattern recognition, data mining, natural language processing etc. (and reading/writing research papers on those), it feels a bit of a stretch to say that I was learing programming or software engineering (which would be more about thing like database systems, programming languages, design patterns, compilers, operating systems and the like).
Are “Computer Science” courses more engineering than science? Possibly, but the same could be said of any university course on say Materials Science.
CS courses are CS courses. CS is a (applied math) science but is different from other sciences—just as natural sciences (physics+chem+bio) are different from other sciences, and social sciences are different from other sciences...
CS is not engineering, just like physics is not engineering. CS is not programming. Engineering and programming are useful tools—in CS and in other disciplines too—and so CS students often learn their basics, but they are in no way part of CS.
(not disagreeing, just thinking aloud)
Some things that fall under Computer Science like Artificial Intelligence seem to be more about theory than learning to programming—whether that counts as “Science” is a question of semantics, but when I was learning about pattern recognition, data mining, natural language processing etc. (and reading/writing research papers on those), it feels a bit of a stretch to say that I was learing programming or software engineering (which would be more about thing like database systems, programming languages, design patterns, compilers, operating systems and the like).
Are “Computer Science” courses more engineering than science? Possibly, but the same could be said of any university course on say Materials Science.
CS courses are CS courses. CS is a (applied math) science but is different from other sciences—just as natural sciences (physics+chem+bio) are different from other sciences, and social sciences are different from other sciences...
CS is not engineering, just like physics is not engineering. CS is not programming. Engineering and programming are useful tools—in CS and in other disciplines too—and so CS students often learn their basics, but they are in no way part of CS.