INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTER SCIENCE

Computer science

Definition:

              Computer science is the scientific and practical approach to computation and its applications. It is the systematic study of the feasibility, structure, expression, and mechanization of the methodical procedures (or algorithms) that underlie the acquisition, representation, processing, storage, communication of, and access to information, whether such information is encoded as bits in a computer memory or transcribed in genes and protein structures in a biological cell. A computer scientist specializes in the theory of computation and the design of computational systems.

History

Charles Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer.

Ada Lovelace is credited with writing the first algorithm intended for processing on a computer.

The earliest foundations of what would become computer science predate the invention of the modern digital computer. Machines for calculating fixed numerical tasks such as the abacus have existed since antiquity, aiding in computations such as multiplication and division. Further, algorithms for performing computations have existed since antiquity, even before sophisticated computing equipment were created. The ancient Sanskrit treatise Shulba Sutras, or "Rules of the Chord", is a book of algorithms written in 800 BCE for constructing geometric objects like altars using a peg and chord, an early precursor of the modern field of computational geometry.

Blaise Pascal designed and constructed the first working mechanical calculator, Pascal's calculator, in 1642. In 1673 Gottfried Leibniz demonstrated a digital mechanical calculator, called the 'Stepped Reckoner'. He may be considered the first computer scientist and information theorist, for, among other reasons, documenting the binary number system. In 1820, Thomas de Colmar launched the mechanical calculator industry. when he released his simplified arithmometer, which was the first calculating machine strong enough and reliable enough to be used daily in an office environment. Charles Babbage started the design of the first automatic mechanical calculator, his difference engine, in 1822, which eventually gave him the idea of the first programmable mechanical calculator, his Analytical Engine. He started developing this machine in 1834 and "in less than two years he had sketched out many of the salient features of the modern computer. A crucial step was the adoption of a punched card system derived from the Jacquard loom" making it infinitely programmable. In 1843, during the translation of a French article on the analytical engine, Ada Lovelace wrote, in one of the many notes she included, an algorithm to compute the Bernoulli numbers, which is considered to be the first computer program. Around 1885, Herman Hollerith invented the tabulator which used punched cards to process statistical information; eventually his company became part of IBM. In 1937, one hundred years after Babbage's impossible dream, Howard Aiken convinced IBM, which was making all kinds of punched card equipment and was also in the calculator business to develop his giant programmable calculator, the ASCC/Harvard Mark I, based on Babbage's analytical engine, which itself used cards and a central computing unit. When the machine was finished, some hailed it as "Babbage's dream come true".

During the 1940s, as new and more powerful computing machines were developed, the term computer came to refer to the machines rather than their human predecessors. As it became clear that computers could be used for more than just mathematical calculations, the field of computer science broadened to study computation in general. Computer science began to be established as a distinct academic discipline in the 1950s and early 1960s. The world's first computer science degree program, the Cambridge Diploma in Computer Science, began at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory in 1953. The first computer science degree program in the United States was formed at Purdue University in 1962. Since practical computers became available, many applications of computing have become distinct areas of study in their own rights.

Although many initially believed it was impossible that computers themselves could actually be a scientific field of study, in the late fifties it gradually became accepted among the greater academic population. It is the now well-known IBM brand that formed part of the computer science revolution during this time. IBM (short for International Business Machines) released the IBM 704 and later the IBM 709 computers, which were widely used during the exploration period of such devices. "

Major achievements

The German military used the Enigma machine (shown here) during World War II for communication they thought to be secret. The large-scale decryption of Enigma traffic at Bletchley Park was an important factor that contributed to Allied victory in WWII.

Despite its short history as a formal academic discipline, computer science has made a number of fundamental contributions to science and society - in fact, along with electronics, it is a founding science of the current epoch of human history called the Information Age and a driver of the Information Revolution, seen as the third major leap in human technological progress after the Industrial Revolution (1750-1850 CE) and the Agricultural Revolution (8000-5000 BCE).

Difference between computer science and computer engineering

Computer engineering

Computer Engineering is the marriage of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. It focuses on computing in all forms, from microprocessors to embedded computing devices to laptop and desktop systems to supercomputers. As such, it concerns the electrical engineering considerations of how microprocessors function, are designed, and are optimized; how data is communicated among electronic components; how integrated systems of electronic components are designed and how they operate to process instructions expressed in software; and how software is written, compiled, and optimized for specific hardware platforms. Therefore, computer engineers are electrical engineers who specialize in software design, hardware design, or systems design that integrates both.

Computer Science

Computer Science is the study of how data and instructions are processed, stored, communicated by computing devices. A modern descendant of Applied Mathematics and Electrical Engineering, Computer Science deals with algorithms for processing data, the symbolic representation of data and instructions, the design of instruction languages for processing data, techniques for writing software that process data on a variety of computing platforms, protocols for communicating data reliably and securely across networks, the organization of data in databases of various types and scales, the emulation of human intelligence and learning through computer algorithms, statistical modeling of data in large databases to support inference of trends, and techniques for protecting the content and authenticity of data. Therefore, computer scientists are scientists and mathematicians who develop ways to process, interpret, store, communicate, and secure data.