Both Computer Science and Software Engineering are fantastic subjects that deserve credit for the research and output they’ve delivered to our world. These fields have brought us countless applications that we use on an hourly basis throughout our lives, and they now branch out and take on different approaches to further improve our lives in the form of subjects like Bioinformatics.

Aside from this, both fields are the educational equivalent of a yapping dog, a dog that’ll shit on your rugs and tear your shoes to pieces just to get some attention and recognition. I mean, why else would we even call ourselves Computer Scientists or Software Engineers?!

It’s because we crave to be known as professionals. Lawyers have extremely taxing and important jobs, and Doctors use their knowledge to save peoples’ lives. At best a Software Engineer will write code for an important piece of equipment. Aside from the field of Human Computer Interaction there is little science in Computer Science and there is no ‘engineering’ in Software Engineering. In both Science and Engineering we have rules to prove that the logic is correct. An engineer that is building a bridge relies on heavy maths and physics, and at best uses applied science to simulate the situation. In the end, if the bridge stays up and can handle a load it is ‘proven’ correct. In Science the process can prove the outcome, and through logic and reasoning the outcome can be proven correct.

Computer Scientists and Software Engineers aren’t tied into the rules of God like engineers or scientists. The domain in which they can work within is the domain of the world. Software is not constrained to known limits, and we’re still improving what we can do with software and computational power. We run on requirements and domain variables or constraints that limit what we can accomplish.

Most already believe that Computer Science is misleading, that what we do is not at all a science. Most believe it to be Maths, and I would say even that is wrong. Maths is used in Computer Science, but it is also used in Business. Is Business just Mathematics? Definitely not! It’s fairly close to being Mathematics in that we can argue whether Mathematics is proven logic, or whether it is an invention of man to explain things beyond our comprehension. I agree that Mathematics is strongly tied to Computer Science, but only because we make it so.

To call CS a Science and SE Engineering is almost insulting to true Scientists and Engineers, and to call either a true ‘profession’ in the highest sense of the word is insulting true professional workers. It’s true that we create beauty and envision art in the software and rules that we create, but we are just in a new field of discovery, much like how Ramon Lull envisioned the wonders of Mathematical Logic to be a proven theory of the existance of God.

So let’s not get too carried away with semantics. Let’s just work on creating great software, okay?