this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
1103 points (99.3% liked)

Science Memes

11189 readers
3156 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] frezik@midwest.social 35 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Depends. A proper computer science course is basically math with machines. At the highest level, it may have zero programming at all, and the machines in question are entirely abstract.

Software Engineering is, well, engineering (setting aside the whole debate on what makes a "real" engineer).

It used to be that universities crammed both under "computer science", and you had to look at the curriculum to figure out which one they were actually teaching. They tend to separate the two more clearly these days. Neither is really "science" in the strictest sense, but the term stuck now.

[–] Vilian@lemmy.ca 3 points 6 months ago (4 children)

math with machines

so computer engineering?

[–] frezik@midwest.social 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

No, the machines tend to be abstract. Such as an infinite paper tape that can manipulate symbols.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That experiment must be ludicrously expensive

[–] GiveMemes@jlai.lu 1 points 5 months ago

This just in: theoretical physicists are not scientists.

[–] PrinceWith999Enemies@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago

No, computer engineering tends to focus more on hardware. When I was doing that kind of thing in college, computer engineering did things like chip design and logic boards and so on. I had courses on DSP and VLSI, multiple assembly languages, RISC vs CISC systems, and so on. In my university, it was considered a subspecializqtion of electrical engineering, with the first two years of undergraduate study being identical.

When I switched over to CS, I was doing things like numerical analysis and software systems architecture.

Both majors used math, but CE (as an EE major) required students to go through (iirc) calculus 5, and I think that CS majors could stop at calc 3 but would end up having to do different kinds of math after that.

[–] Siethron@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

No, that's machines with math

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

Think of it more like programming without electricity.