computer science
Will Faught
August 2016
Why Some Diversity Thinkers Aren’t Buying Tech Industry’s ‘Pipeline’ Excuses
“Diversity thinkers”? Who comes up with that terminology? The pipeline is a valid argument because that’s exactly what’s happening. Anyone who disagrees ought to first take a look in the mirror: have you ever bought your kid a gender-specific toy? A doll for a girl? An action figure for a boy? Because if so, that’s the problem right there. The problem is you. The problem is social. The problem is parents holding their girls back by only giving them “girly” things.
coding computation computer science computers computing feminism npr planet money programming tech technology
1 minute
December 2007
Computer Science Is Not Science
Is Computer Science really a science? Computer scientists don’t apply the scientific method. Testing is currently essential for implementing software correctly, but only because we’re either too lazy or incapable of verifying correctness beforehand due to the extreme complexity of the systems and tools we use. It all boils down to manipulating an abstract machine, in most cases a register machine, which is a mathematical construct. The colors that appear on your monitor and the data written to your hard drive are merely side effects of the mathematical operations we compute.
abstract machine computer science ideas life mathematics register machine scientific method
1 minute