EBSCO Computers and Applied Sciences Complete and ProQuest Computer Science Collection

Computer Science: Not about Computers, Not Science

This paper makes two claims about the fundamental nature of computer science. In particular, I claim that—despite its name—the field of computer science is neither the study of computers, nor is it science in the ordinary sense of the word. While there are technical exceptions to both claims, the nature, purpose, and ultimately the crucial contributions of the beautiful discipline of computer s...

The Applied Mathematics and Computer Science Schism

Using Old Computers for Teaching Computer Science

The research on the history of computing often needs to adopt experimental archaeology methods: the rebuilding of old hardware and software requires to proceed by hypothesis and experimentation. This is one of the key assets of the HMR project, whose main goal is the study of Italian computers from the Fifties and Sixties. The results obtained by the HMR research are made accessible to the publ...

Data collection and evaluation for experimental computer science research

The Software Engineering Laboratory has been monitoring software development at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center since 1976. This report describes the data collection activities of the Laboratory and some of the difficulties of obtaining reliable data. In addition, the application of this data collection process to a current prototyping experiment is reviewed.

Techniques to Introduce Historical Computers into the Computer Science Curriculum

Recent research has shown that students should be familiar with computer history. This paper examines three projects whose goals are to bring history of computers and technology into the computer science classroom in innovative and interesting ways – a video of the PDP-11/10, a virtual reality simulator of the ENIAC computer, and a videotaped interview with one of the principal designers of the...