About Computer Science

History of the CS:

Computer science grew rapidly and became accepted into the family of academic disciplines. It first appeared as a discipline in the 1970s. It grew out of the electrical engineering or math department or both. It emerged as an established and prominent program during the 1990s as it had developed a considerable body of research, knowledge, and innovation that spanned the range from its theoretical and algorithmic foundations to cutting-edge developments in robotics, computer vision, intelligent systems, and bioinformatics.

During the 1990s also, computer science departments faced unprecedented demands. Industry needs for qualified computer science graduates exceeded supply by a large factor. Enrollments in CS programs grew very dramatically that it seriously stressed the ability of CS departments to handle the very large numbers of students.

The scope of the CS discipline:

The shaded portion in the following figure represents the computer science discipline.

What do CS programs prepare students for?

A CS program serves those students who wish to proceed as generalists in computing or who aspire to graduate study, research positions, or cross-disciplinary innovation. The Computer science programs generally intend to prepare students for the following three career paths:

1-      Career Path 1: Designing and implementing software: This refers to the work of software development which includes aspects of web development, interface design, security issues, mobile computing. This is the career path that the majority of computer science graduates choose. Career opportunities occur in a wide variety of settings including large or small software companies, large or small computer services companies, and large organizations of all kinds (industry, government, banking, healthcare, etc.).

2-      Career Path 2: Devising new ways to use computers. This refers to innovation in the application of computer technology. Progress in the CS areas of networking, database, and human-computer-interface enabled the development of the World Wide Web. Now CS researchers are working with scientists from other fields to make robots become practical and intelligent aides, to use databases to create new knowledge, and to use computers to help decipher the secrets of our DNA.

3-      Career Path 3: Developing effective ways to solve computing problems. This refers to the application or development of computer science theory and knowledge of algorithms to ensure the best possible solutions for computationally intensive problems. They develop effective ways to solve computing problems. For example, computer scientists develop the best possible ways to store information in databases, send data over networks, and display complex images.

There is a fourth career path, namely Planning and managing organizational technology infrastructure, which is the focus of IT programs and which it is not targeted by the CS programs, but it draws many CS graduates.

What are the responsibilities of the computer scientists?

The computer scientists should be prepared to work in a broad range of positions involving tasks from theoretical work to software development as stated above. They design and develop all types of software ffrom systems infrastructure (operating systems, communications programs, etc.) to application technologies (web browsers, databases, search engines, etc.).

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