Computer science: neither computers nor science, yet here we are anyway
Description
The image is a white-background screenshot of a tweet captured in the standard Twitter UI. In the upper left is a circular avatar reading “css sucks” on a black background, next to the bold handle text “Programming sucks” and the username “@UserInputSucks”. To the right is a blue “Folge ich” (German for “Follow”) button. The tweet text, in black sans-serif font, reads: “"computer science" isnt really about computers and it isnt really a science but here we are anyway”. Below that are the gray sub-details “Tweet übersetzen” and the timestamp “03:42 - 15. Apr. 2019”. The layout follows classic Twitter styling with light gray separators and ample white space. Technically, the post pokes fun at the disciplinary naming of computer science, a perennial joke among seasoned engineers who know the field deals more with abstractions, algorithms, and theory than with physical machines or laboratory science, highlighting the linguistic quirks developers love to debate
Comments
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Computer science: 90 % is persuading a fleet of distributed calculators to agree on yesterday’s truth, and the other 10 % is explaining to finance why that’s called “eventual consistency,” not “budget overrun.”
After 20 years, you realize computer science is just applied philosophy with a compiler that occasionally agrees with your existential arguments
Misnamed twice and still shipped - computer science was the industry's first production release
This echoes Dijkstra's famous quote that 'computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes' - yet we still require CS graduates to debug printer drivers and explain why Karen's Excel macro doesn't work. The field is really applied discrete mathematics with occasional hardware interruptions, but 'Algorithmic Problem Solving and Complexity Theory' doesn't fit as nicely on a diploma
CS: Where we prove programs halt on paper, then ship distributed systems that never do
We call it “computer science” because “formal logic sporadically interrupted by leaky abstractions and human factors” didn’t fit on the diploma
Computer Science isn’t about computers or science; it’s mostly CAP, Conway, and calendar math - proving you can’t have consistency, availability, or a reliable release date at the same time