Which is more scientific: Computer Science, which is all about numbers and data and exact algorithms, or cat litter, which is all about giving cats a way to poop and pee while reducing the annoyance of their human servants? Seems obvious, right?
It’s obvious until you understand the practical disaster of creating software as detailed in these posts,
https://www.blackliszt.com/2023/04/summary-software-quality-assurance.html
https://www.blackliszt.com/2023/04/summary-computer-science.html
and until you pay careful attention to the information typically found on a box of cat litter and observe how closely the litter does what it’s supposed to do.
Result: the litter wins by a mile.
Check out the information on this box of cat litter, a type I often use.
Let's see in detail how software stands up against cat litter.
- Problem clearly defined
The problem solved by a given piece of software can be stated in documents that are huge. And too often vague.
By contrast, the problem solved by cat litter is clearly defined and already known to everyone who knows how mammals work. There are lots of variations of the details of how cats do what they do; cat litter handles them all.
- Verifiable promises
When you buy software or request it to be built, we all experience how hard it is to tell whether we actually got what we were promised. Departments tend to go through extensive “acceptance testing” with new software, or even a new release of existing software, because it’s too often not right.
With cat litter, you can tell pretty quickly whether the promises are kept. You can see and smell the results.
- See the results
Yes you can see the results of software. But there are a remarkable number of invisible results, like databases and files being created and updated, messages being sent and received, other programs being invoked.
- Consistent results
Even when software works, it doesn’t work all the time for everyone. Sometimes it goes down totally. Sometimes it just produces bad results – or none at all – for some people under some circumstances. Sometimes you can tell the result is bad but sometimes it seems right but is wrong. Or it crashes.
People buy new boxes of litter when the old one is used up. They buy it again and again because … it works! All the time, regardless of the variations of the cat’s output.
Conclusion
I could go on, but it should be clear by now: cat litter is an exemplary model of science and the associated engineering and production. What should be jokingly called “Computer Science” may be a lot things, but “Science” is not one of them.