Is Computer Science Dying?
You must be surprised after reading the title of this article. Is it really true that computer science is dying? Somewhere you don't understand it as our sense of delicacy? Of course you must be thinking so.
Computer institutes are opening all over the world and in Pakistan especially in Gali Gali. Almost every neighbourhood has a couple of institutes teaching "Computer Science". There is hardly any business in which computer intervention is not present.
Computer education has become so common worldwide that even art-specific colleges and institutes are now awarding degrees in computer science and information technology. If we talk about Pakistan, there are also higher education institutions dedicated to Islamic studies offering Bachelors and Masters programs in Information Technology. To our knowledge, there is no university in the country where you can't get a degree in computer science, although perhaps a dozen of those universities are qualified to offer higher education in mathematics. So is computer science dying after all?
Yes, we would still say that computer science might be dying. Why, before we examine that, let's know what computer science actually is.
Definition of Computer Science
According to Wikipedia, computer science is defined as:
"The theoretical study of the foundations of information and computation and their application to computer systems is computer science or computing science." "
While, according to Encyclopedia Britannica Online, computer science means:
"The study of computers, their design, their applications for computation, data processing and system control, including the design and development of computer hardware, software and programming".
With these definitions in mind, if you think about the computer science graduates around you, you will realise two things. First, most students are interested in studying computer science because they want to learn how to use computers. Secondly, to most of them computer science means nothing more than learning programming languages and connecting computers. But is this really what computer science is all about?
The dotcom bubble
In the early 1990s, known as the dot-com bubble, computer science became popular as the fastest and most accessible way to make money. This was also true because at that time all businesses related to computers and the Internet were developing very rapidly and a large workforce was needed to keep up with this growth. This is the reason why it is assumed that every university graduate with a computer science degree will immediately get a great job. This continued until businesses became saturated with computers and there was no room for more IT professionals.
Most of these IT professionals were those who entered the field only to earn money. After the bursting of the dotcom bubble, we saw a gradual decline in the number of students coming to universities to study computer science each year. This has resulted in European countries, particularly the United States and Great Britain, opening their doors to foreign students in view of the small number of local students. Considered to be the stick of , the students took full advantage of this opportunity.
It is common among students to think that computer science is just a name for learning programming
But what happened then? Students who studied computer science only as a means to earn money entered the market with incomplete knowledge of computer science and the market was not only filled with unqualified people but also created survival problems for serious IT professionals. done But why did this happen?
One of the main reasons for this problem is ignorance of the real meaning and purpose of computer science. Bachelors and even students selected for master's programs consider a few areas of computer science as complete computer science. Even those working in the IT field are seen to think that computer science is basically a name for taking computer courses that teach how to operate a computer and learn as many programming languages as possible.
In January 2007, the British Computer Society published an article by Dr. Neil McBride of De Montfort University. The title of this article was "The Death of Computing". This article was an average written article in which the doctor himself made several glaring mistakes. "And what has changed is the need to learn low-level programming or any programming," Dr. Sahib wrote at one place. Who needs C when there is Ruby on Rails?"
Does anyone really need C? Of course, but to those who want to know what happens when a program written in Ruby on Rails is run. The point here is to clarify that a university degree teaches 'understanding' of something while a course from an institute produces 'skills'.
Admiring computer science, Edsger Dijkstra writes that "Computer science is no longer just about computers, just as astronomy is no longer limited to telescopes."
I like this saying very much. But often people who have never met an astronomer misunderstand this statement. I was very interested in astronomy as a child and spent a considerable part of my time in observatories and reading scientific books. During this period I learned so much about visualisation that I never learned while taking a physics course at school. I never built my own binoculars. But there have been many astronomers who have built telescopes and their changes have increased our knowledge of optics.
There is a fundamental difference between a telescope maker and an astronomer. More important to a telescope maker than knowing the motion of Stellar Bodies through space is how the telescope is built. But both astronomers and telescope builders must have solid knowledge of how light travels through lenses and how it bounces back and forth. Astronomy is extremely difficult without knowing this.
The same principle holds true for computer science. A computer scientist does not have to design his own integrated circuits, write his own compiler or build his own operating system. In modern times, all these things have become so complicated that making them is beyond the scope of a single person. But it is important for a computer scientist to know what is happening in the compiler, operating system and CPU when he writes, compiles and then runs a program.
A telescope is an important tool for an astronomer just as a computer is an important tool for a computer scientist. But remember that for both the telescope and the computer are just a tool and not the focus of study. An astronomer observes various objects in space through a telescope while a computer scientist analyzes algorithms etc. through a computer.
Computer science is actually a branch of applied mathematics
Software and hardware are generally considered to be two different things. Apparently these two feel separate. But this is not the reality. Computers in the world had no software and had to be wired around to perform various tasks. Advanced hardware is provided with firmware that performs critical functions very close to the hardware. Whether a task is performed in hardware or in software, this information can be quite important to a computer scientist. However, it is not right to weigh hardware and software on separate scales. These are two sides of the same coin.
Computer scientists cannot write programs
It may come as a surprise to read that the primary job of a computer scientist is not to write software. It's common in the industry that when people hire a computer scientist, they think they've got someone who's done a four- or five-year computer programming course. . This is the case with students who go to university to pursue a computer science degree. The same is reinforced in the minds of these students that they will spend four or six years at university learning programming.
Some computer scientists, even professors who teach computer science, can't really program. There are also many professors who are teaching programming concepts to PhD students, but no student can claim that the professor cannot program. While the reality is the opposite. It is quite possible that the professor may not be able to program in Java in .NET as well as the student.
Expecting a computer science student to be a good programmer right out of university is a false hope. Such a student may be familiar with more than half a dozen programming languages but may not yet have done complex programming using these programming languages. However, if he still manages to create a complex or in other words commercial project, it is very certain that he would not have learned this in university.
It is extremely important to understand the difference between a computer scientist and a software engineer. These two are separate fields. Software engineering education covers programming entirely. It teaches students from software design to programming languages. Computer science course also includes all these topics but its purpose is only awareness of these topics. So a computer science student does not necessarily know software engineering.
Computer science is mathematics
Computer science is actually a branch of applied mathematics. But if you look at the computer science syllabus, the mathematics part is very less. Even most of the students are unaware that the maths they are being taught is not a burden but the foundation of computer science. It is also a fact that the way mathematics is taught here to the students, they consider it a burden. What else should be considered dry books without practical examples?
An important component of computer science is algorithm design. There can be many ways to solve a problem. But finding the fastest and most profitable path is algorithm design. Knowing about algorithm design is as important for a computer scientist as knowing programming is for a software engineer. Neither .NET nor C or Java comes into play for creating algorithms. Algorithm design can be done only with the help of mathematics and adapting this algorithm to a computer is the job of a software engineer.
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