Tuesday, December 5

Problem-Solving Using Pascal

Roman, who is a brilliant computer scientist, wrote an intriguing blog entry about problems and solving them. There's indeed a dizzying number of books in computer science named "Problem Solving Using X" *.

Apart from computer science, very few academic fields consider practical problem-solving as their task. Other scientists say that problem-solving is not a scientific endeavor at all--they say that explaining, describing, predicting, and perhaps understanding, are scientists' tasks.

It makes you wonder, "What is this thing called computer science?" Is it a sort of science after all, or does the focus on problem-solving render it a sort of engineering?

* Replace X here with your favorite programming language. I will later deal with the disappointment of the poor sociologist when (s)he finds and reads a book called "Problem Solving Using Python".

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