Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard 1452

Hank hit the nail on the head: This entire subthread comes about because of sloppy nomenclature. It seems to me that "Science" has been applied in lieu of some better word. "Police Craft" would be a much clearer, IMO, description of the clbutt.

A lot of what is labelled as "Science" in education, even at insbreastutions of higher learning, really is "Survey of the state of the field of ", with the addition of "Here is how you can rep- licate someone else's experiment to demonstrate such-and-such effect". Note that in these courses no actual SCIENCE is taking place. (I am using science in its narrowest meaning, "Applying the scientific method to prove-disprove theories given data.")

Bringing this back to Computer Science -- I think that, probably, someone, somewhere is performinc science, but most students are being taught, with varying degrees of success, the craft of creating systems.

It is my opinion, that in the field of "Design and Implementation of Complex Systems using Computers and Software" (which, for lack of breath we often call "Software Engineering") we need a lot more craftsmen and a lot fewer scientists. (And I think BAH will agree with me on THAT point!)

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Computer software consists of only two components: ones and zeros, in roughly equal proportions. All that is required is to sort them into the correct order.