The Technical and the Human Side of Computer Science

Abstract

A scientific discipline, like any other field of human activity, is shaped by various factors such as individual achievements and discoveries, social context, economic pressure and, last not least, fashion and trends. For most disciplines, it is not too hard to give a comprehensive description of their essence, for instance, “computer science deals with principles and practice of construction, programming and application of digital computers”. A deeper understanding, however, has to cover origins, history, folklore and so on, and cannot be gained without taking into account all the aforementioned influential factors.