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Comment on How These Things Work – A book about CS from first principles (2016)parent

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I'm reading Code right now and it's fantastic. I'm a bit more than 1/2 the way through and so far it's only been about how computers work and not really about computer science.

I heard an expression this weekend that I think is apt - a computer is to computer science as a telescope is to astronomy.

Dijkstra is supposed to have said something like this though the origin is disputed.

"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."

"Calling it 'computer science' is like calling surgery 'knife science'."

(Also, "CS could be called the post-Turing decline in the study of formal systems." But I don't know for sure if that was Dijkstra. It's one of my favorite jokes.)

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