The Computer science reference article from the Simple Wikipedia on 01-May-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Computer science

Computer science is the study of computation and its applications, in all forms, as well as the mathematical formulas that have to do with the making and use of computers.

Only toward the end of the 20th century has computer science been seen as a different science and made its own ways of doing things and its own set of word meanings. It has roots in electrical engineering, math and language science, and one can think of it as a mix of science, engineering and art.

Computer science looks at the theoretical parts of computers, computer engineering looks at the computer equipment (hardware) parts of computers, and software engineering looks at how useful computer programs can be.

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes

- Edsger Dijkstra

Table of contents

1 Major subfields 1.1 Mathematical foundations 1.2 Theoretical computer science 1.3 Applied computer science 1.4 Specific techniques 2 See also

Major subfields

Mathematical foundations

• Boolean algebra
• Computer numbering formats (How computers count)
• Discrete mathematics
• Symbolic logic

Theoretical computer science

• Algorithmic information theory
• Complexity theory
• Computability theory (Can a computer do something?)
• Information theory
• Theory of computation (or theoretical computer science)
• Graph theory
• Type theory
• Denotational semantics
• Algorithms
• Compilers (Building programs from source code)
• Lexical Analysis
• Microprogramming
• Operating systems
• Cryptography (Making data safer)

Applied computer science

• Artificial intelligence
• Computer algebra
• Computer architecture
• Computer graphics
• Computer networks
• Computer program
• Computer programming
• Computer security (Making computers safe to use)
• Databases
• Data structure
• Distributed computing
• Information retrieval
• Operating systems (What makes your computer run. E.G Linux)
• Programming languages (Languages that a computer can understand)
• Program specification
• Program verification (Testing programs)
• Robots
• Software engineering

Specific techniques

• Benchmark (Testing computer abilities)
• Computer vision (How computers "see" things)
• Collision Detection
• Data compression (Make data smaller)
• Data structures
• Data acquisition
• Design patterns
• Digital signal processing
• File formats
• Human-computer interaction (How we use computers)
• Information security
• Internet
• Online computations and algorithms
• Optimization
• Software metrics
• VLSI design

See also

• computing
• computer scientist
• Turing Award
• IEEE John von Neumann Medal
• Computer jargon
• Computer slang
• Computer science basic topics

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