: When our discipline was newborn, there was the usual perplexity as to its proper name. We at Chapel Hill, following, I believe, Allen Newell and Herb Simon, settled on computer science as our departments name. Now, with the benefit of three decades hindsight, I believe that to have been a mistake.... I submit that by any reasonable criterion the discipline we call computer science is in fact not a science but a synthetic, an engineering, discipline. We are concerned with making things, be they computers, algorithms, or software systems. Unlike other engineering disciplines, much of our product is intangible: algorithms, programs, software systems. Heinz Zemanek has aptly defined computer science as the engineering of abstract objects. Even when we build a computer, the computer scientist designs only the abstract properties---its architecture and implementation. Electrical, mechanical, and refrigeration engineers design the realization. In contrast with many engineers who make houses, cars, medicines, and clothing for human need and enjoyment, we make things that do not themselves directly satisfy human needs, but which others use in making things that enrich human living. In a word, the computer scientist is a toolsmithno more, but no less. It is an honorable calling. --Fred Brooks Brooks, Fred (1996). "The computer scientist as toolsmith II". Communications of the ACM. Association for Computing Machinery. 39 (3): 6168. DOI: 10.1145/227234.227243 Frederick Brooks (19312022) was an American computer architect, software engineer, and computer scientist, best known for managing the development of IBM's System/360 family of computers and the OS/360 software support package, then later writing candidly about those experiences in his seminal book The Mythical Man-Month. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks
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