The Scientist

I thought I would take some time to talk just a little bit about something that I've been thinking about. Big surprise, it is about my major. So Computer Science is in the College of Engineering. Likewise, most people would consider Computer Scientists as engineers. I thought this for most of my college career. Then one day my friend Sam started talking about how he was a Computer SCIENTIST, and not an engineer. So I listened to him and kinda just blew it off at first. Later, I began thinking about it and it did start to make a lot of sense. Engineer work with things and are able to test and modify things. Computer Scientists work with ideas. Sure, software is a thing, but it isn't something you can touch and measure (I know there are ways but not in the sense of a physical object). So I started to see Sam's side but I didn't make my decision on this until I took PPD (see below). First off, Dean Roberts doesn't consider CS students as engineers either. Also, if you look at any other engineering discipline, there is a lot of cross over of classes and concepts. For example my friend Jeff, an ag engineer, had to take dynamics. So did my friend Nick, an architectural engineer. Also, if you think about it civil engineers would also have to take a lot of the same classes. Nuclear engineers and chemical engineers take similar classes as well as some with he first two. Even computer engineers and electrical engineers take a lot of classes together. They are a little more separated from the rest of engineering but it is still really close. Computer engineers have to take a few programming classes and we have to take 1 computer engineering class, but that is all the cross over that there is. We are so separate from the other engineers that we are in a completely different building and the other end of campus. Anyway, the next time you see a computer scientist be sure you don't call them an engineer.

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