“As a result, the topic became – primarily in the USA – prematurely known as ‘computer science’ – which, actually, is like referring to surgery as ‘knife science’ – and it was firmly implanted in people’s minds that computing science is about machines and their peripheral equipment. Quod non”
Dijkstra (1986) On a cultural gap http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD924.html (EWD 924).
1980s
Context: A confusion of even longer standing came from the fact that the unprepared included the electronic engineers that were supposed to design, build and maintain the machines. The job was actually beyond the electronic technology of the day, and, as a result, the question of how to get and keep the physical equipment more or less in working condition became in the early days the all-overriding concern. As a result, the topic became – primarily in the USA – prematurely known as ‘computer science’ – which, actually, is like referring to surgery as ‘knife science’ – and it was firmly implanted in people’s minds that computing science is about machines and their peripheral equipment. Quod non [Latin: "Which is not true"]. We now know that electronic technology has no more to contribute to computing than the physical equipment. We now know that programmable computer is no more and no less than an extremely handy device for realizing any conceivable mechanism without changing a single wire, and that the core challenge for computing science is hence a conceptual one, viz., what (abstract) mechanisms we can conceive without getting lost in the complexities of our own making.
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Edsger W. Dijkstra 68
Dutch computer scientist 1930–2002Related quotes
Source: The Nature of Belief http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/sept97/0213.html
Bauer (1971) "Software Engineering." Information Processing: Proceedings of the IFIP Congress 1971, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, August 23-28, 1971.
“Trees sprout up just about everywhere in computer science…”
Vol. IV - A, Combinatorial Algorithms, Section 4.2.1.6 (2011)
The Art of Computer Programming (1968–2011)
As quoted in The Golden Ratio : The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number (2002) by Mario Livio, p. 201.
Introduction
Cosmic Imagery: Key Images in the History of Science (2008)
“Do you know computer science?”
“I know it’s for lamers who can’t handle real math.”
Source: Mathematicians in Love (2006), Chapter 3, “Rocking with Washer Drop” (p. 137)
Source: Meeting the challenge (2009), p. xxviii; As cited in: Lyn Robinson and David Bawden (2011).
Source: Introductory lecture to Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQLUPjefuWA
“Any problem in computer science can be solved with another level of indirection.”
Attributed to David Wheeler by Butler Lampson in his Turing Lecture https://web.archive.org/web/20070221210039/http://research.microsoft.com/Lampson/Slides/TuringLecture.doc (17 February 1993)
Lampson uses the phrase without attribution in Authentication in distributed systems: theory and practice https://doi.org/10.1145/138873.138874 (November 1992)