A taxonomy for computer science

We try to capture the essence of information technology and computer science, arguing that information technologists have the same principal goal as all technologists: to create machines with certain properties. To achieve this, they formalize the problem, i.e. abstract the properties into a specification and invent or develop a schema, i.e. an abstraction of the machine’s structure. Subsequently, it is their principal task to prove that the schema satisfies the specification. Computer scientists develop mathematical and physical means to support or even enable that task. From this, the principal research questions of computer science may be derived. From this viewpoint, we try to propose a consistent set of notions together with a consistent terminology, which may clarify the relation of information technology and computer science to other scientific disciplines and also give rise to new ideas about computer science education.