What is computer science

From Computer Science Wiki
What is Computer Science?[1]


I discovered this excellent treatment of disciplines within computing from the ACM[2].

Within the broad scope of computing there are five disciplines:

  • Computer Engineering (CE)
  • Computer Science (CS)
  • Information Systems (IS)
  • Information Technology (IT)
  • Software Engineering (SE)

These disciplines share characteristics in the following lanes:

  • Organizational System Issues
  • Application Technologies
  • Software Development
  • Systems Infrastructure
  • Computer Hardware and and Architecture


It is a mistake to use the term "computer science" when you in fact mean "software engineering". They are different! There is not universal agreement about these disciplines.

A note about these files: they are fairly dense, and you may need to zoom in to read the characteristics of the different disciplines within computing.

References