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Discussion on: Computer Science vs Software Engineering

 
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Paula Gearon • Edited

No. I agree with most of what you have to say above, except that software engineering a branch of computer science. It is not.

Software engineering did start as an area of computer science in the 1960s. During the 70s to 80s the definition evolved:

... the scope of its challenge became clearer. In addition to its computer science foundations, software engineering also involves human processes that, by their nature, are harder to formalize than are the logical abstractions of computer science.

(from The Overview Report by a joint task force by the ACM/AIS/IEEE-CS)

As you say, computer science and math are behind all of the engineering. And just like other disciplines of engineering, the scientists don't need to know much about engineering, but engineers need to understand enough of the science to apply it. I definitely agree with you on that.

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Matteo Joliveau

Funny enough, I see the two POVs at stake (CS is part of SE or viceversa) and I think I personally stand outside of this diagram. To me, both are separate parts of what in Italy we call "Informatica", or "computer technology", the broather ensemble of software and data processing.
CS is the abstract, mathematical, theoretical part and SE is the concrete, practical part. They complement each other and often build on each other's findings.

I think it's interesting that I seem to struggle to find an equivalent word in English to describe this broader field.

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Paula Gearon

My own POV developed from my education. As an engineering student we learned a lot of science, but this was as a tool for engineering. Scientific research (i.e. the observation/hypothesis/testing cycle) was what scientists did. But if that was the case, then what did engineering researchers do? Well... sometimes they research practical techniques for applying science, but then that is science too. And sometimes engineers do purely theoretical work.

Then I went back to university and studied science. That's when I learned that many scientists research practical applications that I would have thought was more in the domain of engineering.

So the line is extremely blurry.

Despite there being no clear division, in general I still think that science is more about understanding theoretical underpinnings, while engineering is more focused on the application of existing science to the real world. But each does reach into the domain of the other. This applies as much to electrical engineering/physics, chemical engineering/chemistry, materials engineering/materials science, etc, as it does to software engineering/computer science.