Someone posted an old address by Fred Brooks, author of the celebrated The Mythical Man-Month, given on the occasion of his acceptance of the ACM Allen Newell Award in 1994. It’s an interesting talk and one that I hadn’t read before.
Brooks posits the idea that Computer Science isn’t a science. Instead it should be viewed as an engineering discipline and in particular that what we are really doing is toolsmithing. Some may chafe at that definition but Brooks makes a good case for it. He says that our value is in the tools that we build for others to solve their problems with.
He illustrates this by describing the work of his laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The laboratory takes an interdisciplinary approach and collaborates closely with colleagues in Physics and Biology. He describes some of the tools that they built during those collaborations and how both sides of the collaboration were better off in the end.
It’s a nice talk and well worth a read. You may find yourself persuaded that his definition of “Computer Science” is the correct one.
Update: Nick Higham points out that I neglected to add a link to Brooks’ talk. Silly me. Here it is.