Computing Education:
What Have We Learnt From
COMPUTER SCIENCE
(and Software Engineering)?
John Hurst
4th Melbourne Conventicle
Deakin University
16 Nov 2007
So we have two new fields:
John Stuart Mill (1843):
"Several sciences are often necessary to form the groundwork of a single art. Such is the complication of human affairs, that to enable one thing to be done, it is often requisite to know the nature and properties of many things ....
Art in general consists of the truths of Science, arranged in the most convenient order for practice, instead of the order which is the most convenient for thought. Science groups and arranges its truths so as to enable us to take in at one view as much as possible of the general order of the universe.
Art ... brings together from parts of the field of science most remote from one another, the truths relating to the production of the different and heterogeneous conditions necessary to each effect which the exigencies of practical life require. "
(My emphases)
The challenge in here is one with which one of my recent PhD graduates (Angela) wrestled, in acknowledging that a true understanding of student programming difficulties required a 'typology' of attributes that define such difficulties.
Knowing the nature and properties of the discipline in question is the first step to creating the intellectual rigour that goes to make up a science.
In other words, science consists of taxonomies.
Computing Education has a long (and distinguished) history!
Donald Knuth, in his 1973 Turing Award Lecture, wrote:
If we go back to Latin roots, we find ars, artis meaning "skill." It is perhaps significant that the corresponding Greek word was Τεχνη (tau-epsilon-chi-nu-eta), the root of both "technology" and "technique."
The word "science" seems to have been used for many years in about the same sense as "art"; for example, people spoke also of the seven liberal sciences, which were the same as the seven liberal arts. Duns Scotus in the thirteenth century called logic "the Science of Sciences, and the Art of Arts". As civilization and learning developed, the words took on more and more independent meanings, "science" being used to stand for knowledge, and "art" for the application of knowledge. Thus, the science of astronomy was the basis for the art of navigation. The situation was almost exactly like the way in which we now distinguish between "science" and "engineering."
(My emphases)
Knuth, by his own admission, regards The Art of Programming as his life's major work. It is still being written (vol 4 of 6).
Derived largely from APL:
What are the notations for Computing Education?
Many of you will know where I am coming from here: My Microsoft Page
But I'm not anti-Microsoft, just pro-interoperability!
The Age, Letters, 8 Nov 2007 |
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