Computer science

• Alan Turing's insight: there are only five actions that a computer has to perform in order to do "anything".

• move left one location;


• move right one location;


• read symbol at current location;


• print 0 at current location;


• print 1 at current location.

• Corrado Böhm and Giuseppe Jacopini's insight: there are only three ways of combining these actions (into more complex ones) that are needed in order for a computer to do "anything".[54]

• sequence: first do this, then do that;


• selection: IF such-and-such is the case, THEN do this, ELSE do that;


• repetition: WHILE such-and-such is the case, DO this.

Programming languages can be used to accomplish different tasks in different ways. Common programming paradigms include:

• Functional programming, a style of building the structure and elements of computer programs that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids state and mutable data. It is a declarative programming paradigm, which means programming is done with expressions or declarations instead of statements.[55]


• Imperative programming, a programming paradigm that uses statements that change a program's state.[56] In much the same way that the imperative mood in natural languages expresses commands, an imperative program consists of commands for the computer to perform. Imperative programming focuses on describing how a program operates.


• Object-oriented programming, a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which may contain data, in the form of fields, often known as attributes; and code, in the form of procedures, often known as methods. A feature of objects is that an object's procedures can access and often modify the data fields of the object with which they are associated. Thus object-oriented computer programs are made out of objects that interact with one another.[57]


• Service-oriented programming, a programming paradigm that uses "services" as the unit of computer work, to design and implement integrated business applications and mission critical software programs

Many languages offer support for multiple paradigms, making the distinction more a matter of style than of technical capabilities.[58]

Conferences are important events for computer science research. During these conferences, researchers from the public and private sectors present their recent work and meet. Unlike in most other academic fields, in computer science, the prestige of conference papers is greater than that of journal publications.[59][60] One proposed explanation for this is the quick development of this relatively new field requires rapid review and distribution of results, a task better handled by conferences than by journals.[61]

Computer Science, known by its near synonyms, Computing, Computer Studies, has been taught in UK schools since the days of batch processing, mark sensitive cards and paper tape but usually to a select few students.[62] In 1981, the BBC produced a micro-computer and classroom network and Computer Studies became common for GCE O level students (11–16-year-old), and Computer Science to A level students. Its importance was recognised, and it became a compulsory part of the National Curriculum, for Key Stage 3 & 4. In September 2014 it became an entitlement for all pupils over the age of 4.[63]

In the US, with 14,000 school districts deciding the curriculum, provision was fractured.[64] According to a 2010 report by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), only 14 out of 50 states have adopted significant education standards for high school computer science.[65]

Israel, New Zealand, and South Korea have included computer science in their national secondary education curricula,[66][67] and several others are following.[68]

1. ^ In 1851
   


2. ^ "The introduction of punched cards into the new engine was important not only as a more convenient form of control than the drums, or because programs could now be of unlimited extent, and could be stored and repeated without the danger of introducing errors in setting the machine by hand; it was important also because it served to crystallize Babbage's feeling that he had invented something really new, something much more than a sophisticated calculating machine." Bruce Collier, 1970
   


3. ^ See the entry
   "Computer science" on Wikiquote for the history of this quotation.
   


4. ^ The word "anything" is written in quotation marks because there are things that computers cannot do. One example is: to answer the question if an arbitrary given computer program will eventually finish or run forever (the Halting problem).
   

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Overview[edit]

• Tucker, Allen B. (2004). Computer Science Handbook (2nd ed.). Chapman and Hall/CRC. ISBN 978-1-58488-360-9.
  
  • "Within more than 70 chapters, every one new or significantly revised, one can find any kind of information and references about computer science one can imagine. […] all in all, there is absolute nothing about Computer Science that can not be found in the 2.5 kilogram-encyclopaedia with its 110 survey articles […]." (Christoph Meinel, Zentralblatt MATH)


• van Leeuwen, Jan (1994). Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-72020-5.
  
  • "[…] this set is the most unique and possibly the most useful to the [theoretical computer science] community, in support both of teaching and research […]. The books can be used by anyone wanting simply to gain an understanding of one of these areas, or by someone desiring to be in research in a topic, or by instructors wishing to find timely information on a subject they are teaching outside their major areas of expertise." (Rocky Ross, SIGACT News)


• Ralston, Anthony; Reilly, Edwin D.; Hemmendinger, David (2000). Encyclopedia of Computer Science (4th ed.). Grove's Dictionaries. ISBN 978-1-56159-248-7.
  
  • "Since 1976, this has been the definitive reference work on computer, computing, and computer science. […] Alphabetically arranged and classified into broad subject areas, the entries cover hardware, computer systems, information and data, software, the mathematics of computing, theory of computation, methodologies, applications, and computing milieu. The editors have done a commendable job of blending historical perspective and practical reference information. The encyclopedia remains essential for most public and academic library reference collections." (Joe Accardin, Northeastern Illinois Univ., Chicago)


• Edwin D. Reilly (2003). Milestones in Computer Science and Information Technology. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-57356-521-9.

Selected literature[edit]

• Knuth, Donald E. (1996). Selected Papers on Computer Science. CSLI Publications, Cambridge University Press.


• Collier, Bruce (1990). The little engine that could've: The calculating machines of Charles Babbage. Garland Publishing Inc. ISBN 978-0-8240-0043-1.


• Cohen, Bernard (2000). Howard Aiken, Portrait of a computer pioneer. The MIT press. ISBN 978-0-262-53179-5.


• Tedre, Matti (2014). The Science of Computing: Shaping a Discipline. CRC Press, Taylor & Francis.


• Randell, Brian (1973). The origins of Digital computers, Selected Papers. Springer-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-540-06169-4.
  
  • "Covering a period from 1966 to 1993, its interest lies not only in the content of each of these papers – still timely today – but also in their being put together so that ideas expressed at different times complement each other nicely." (N. Bernard, Zentralblatt MATH)

Articles[edit]

• Peter J. Denning. Is computer science science?, Communications of the ACM, April 2005.


• Peter J. Denning, Great principles in computing curricula, Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2004.


• Research evaluation for computer science, Informatics Europe report Archived October 18, 2017, at the Wayback Machine. Shorter journal version: Bertrand Meyer, Christine Choppy, Jan van Leeuwen and Jorgen Staunstrup, Research evaluation for computer science, in Communications of the ACM, vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 31–34, April 2009.

Curriculum and classification[edit]