Comment Re:What? - Question Solved. (Score 1) 174
Computer Science, just like Medicine has valid aspects which involve hard science, such as developing a new medication or developing a new data storage mechanism like a Tree / Link List. However where it stops being science is when you're just implementing those solutions, after they've been proven to work and have been flushed out.
If I take a Red / Black tree Library and either write it myself and use it or use an existing one, I'm not doing any kind of science, I'm just applying the existing science to my task. Just as if you take an aspirin for a headache you're not participating in science, your just applying the science to the application.
Science is defined as:
the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
, Which for the most part is not what programming or development is. I'm very rarely observing new behavior or studying the systematic response of a new system. I'm simply taking what already exists and reapplying it into a new solution.
It's because of this that I feel we should stop using the term science loosely and on a side note the term engineering. If you're not progressing a field of study then you shouldn't apply the term science, feel free to disagree. Just as if you're not designing something new you're engineering. The terms get thrown around in places they don't belong and I think that should stop.