Computer Science Or Software Engineering Refactoring Notes

I propose this page be renamed OrVsVersus?. Or should that be VersusOrOr?? Umm. Anyway, something terminal should be done to this page.

ComputerScienceOrSoftwareEngineering got TooBigToEdit. This was the first victim.

Moved back to a page of its own. Originally this page was ComputerScienceVsSoftwareEngineering?. -- CostinCozianu

Costin, these pages names are far too similar. If you think they represent distinct concepts, please come up with distinguishable names. -- FrancisHwang

Francis, I've stayed away from the discussion about your refactorings/butcherings. I hope you draw your lessons that a) I have nothing personal with you b) you sometimes get things wrong, even with the applauses of your fans.

What you got terribly wrong is the SoftwareEngineeringVsComputerScience thing (as well as others, but for those I care less). I hope you won't paste back together unrelated discussion, and I hope you realize - you say that you're a writer - that you can't cut and paste "tale quale" vaguely related discussions making an amorph conglomerate without any proper context. Try to cut and paste together to dramatical plays or two novels and you'll easily see what a mockery you make. The loss of context and the agglutination is what happened with other refactoring of yours as well. So my advice is for you to take a deap breath and cool down a bit. Errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum. --CostinCozianu

Costin, maybe I'm wrong and there is a distinction between these two pages that I don't see. Please help me out here. We've been over this before and I really don't see the distinction. If you could rename this page in a way that is very distinct, then maybe that will help me see what you're talking about. -- francis

Francis, here it is once more: this page started by discussing the distinction between software engineering and computer science, whether computer science is a proper science, whether software engineering is a proper engineering, etc... It shows quite clearly in the contribution on this page, and all the contribution are made in the context of this page as defined mainly by the opening statement. The whole discussion and debate follows logically from the first paragraph, right?

Now I guess we should agree that, even in their infancy, CS exists as a science while SE exists as engineering and the two are distinct. Even if you don't agree let's assume this as a hypothesis.

So, the page SoftwareEngineeringVsComputerScience was initiated by me to discuss a related but different phenomenon (which I qualified as AntiPattern): the "rebellion" of software engineering practitioners as reflected in the practices and approaches seen in the software industry for quite a while now, to go against the best knowledge, developments and research directions offered at the current level in CS.

Sorry, but I can't put it clearer than what I've done here. The distinction between the titles is also clear to me versus is one conjunction and or is totally another conjunction. Furthermore the order of the two terms is reversed. I don't know but SoftwareEngineeringVsComputerScience is a good title for that page because versus is usually used for confrontations (like in TysonVsLewis? ), and it is SE vs CS because the SE camp (or part thereof) started the "fight".

I'm in agreement with Costin here. -- PaulHudson

I don't think "versus" is useful in the way you think it's useful. First of all, there are many cases where it's used simply in a compare-and-contrast way, not in an actual fight. (See also: AdoptVsAdapt, CgiVsServlet, DesigningVsModeling, ExtremePracticesVsExtremeValues, etc.) Second, I don't think "versus" is a conjunction where the order really makes a difference. Would TysonVsLewis? be a different fight than LewisVsTyson?? -- francis

Ah, didn't read carefully enough, sorry. I meant I think OneVsTwo? is a significantly different topic from OneOrTwo? -- ph

Please don't apologize, we're just having a difference of opinion.

I don't think "vs" is sufficiently distinct from "or". I can take Costin's word that there is a distinction here that he has a good grasp of that I don't, but I'm asking for his help in making the naming distinction more meaningfully pronounced. Maybe then that'll help me see where he's coming from. -- francis

I think Costin is using Vs to imply some opposition. It certainly can be used in compare-and-contrast, but Or is much more appropriate in those cases. "Or" suggests it's not that important which way you go. "Vs" (as Costin was using it) implies something much stronger - choosing one is a denial/refusal of the other - people choosing the SoftwareEngineering side are in some sense rejecting ComputerScience. Now, perhaps we can think of a better phrase than Vs, one which doesn't also have the compare-and-contrast meaning, but I can't think of one right now.

Contrast, in the StarWars universe, TheDarkSideOrTheLightSide? and TheDarkSideVsTheLightSide? (in writing that, I realized I don't know what the not-the-Dark-Side is called in StarWars).

-- ph

I guess a visit to dictionary.com should end the controversy. "Versus" and "or" are distinct in English as in any other language (I can account for Romanian and French also), and they have nothing in common other than they are both conjunctions. I don't think that you can properly say "sufficiently distinct" - if two things are distinct, they are distinct period. I don't really understand what all the fuss is about. -- Costin

[Actually, 'versus' is a preposition.]

http://www.m-w.com says:

against
in contrast to or as the alternative of <free trade versus protection>

... the first definition being more what Costin's talking about, the second being more what I'm talking about. I think usage here tends to be equally for both definitions. I certainly don't think the distinction's strong enough.

Here's what I mean by "sufficiently distinct", Costin. Long after we've hashed out this question, someone comes along to the Wiki for the first time and text-searches for ComputerScience and sees these two pages in the search results. Will they have any idea at all, given the somewhat flexible meaning of the word "versus", what the distinction is between the two pages? Without having been through the word-lawyering that we're all committing on this page right now? My guess is that they won't. -- francis

SoftwareEngineeringAsContrastedToComputerScienceAndViceVersa?, anyone? :-) -- ph