One of Edward A. Lee's main topics in his book, Plato and the Nerd: The Creative Partnership of Humans and Technology (MIT Press, 2017), is the contradistinction between science and descriptions on the one hand and engineering and prescriptions on the other hand. Reading between the lines, Lee is addressing the big question: Is computer science really a science?

Some computer scientists and software engineers write about the history of their fields. Others analyze and document the philosophy of their own discipline. In this latter regard, I am happy to announce the publication of Edward A. Lee's book on the philosophy of engineering:

Plato and the Nerd: The Creative Partnership of Humans and Technology (MIT Press, 2017)

Category mistakes and incomputability claims seem to go hand in hand. I have given one modern example in connection with programming languages and Michael Hicks and another one directly concerning the diagonal argument. In the present blog post I shall give one more example, based on an excerpt from my rejected POPL paper entitled: `Category Mistakes in Computer Science at Large.' Specifically, I shall zoom in on the “code improvement problem,” as discussed by Albert R. Meyer and Dennis M.

There is an obvious distinction to be made between computers (which include laptops and iPads) on the one hand and mathematical models on the other hand. Strictly speaking, it is wrong to say that “a computer is a finite state machine.” That's like speaking about a mathematical model as if it coincides with reality. Unfortunately, it is unusual to make these kinds of observations explicit in computer science, as I am doing now and as I have done in my paper entitled `Category Mistakes in Computer Science at Large.'

I'm reading about “the science of deep specification.” This grand research project is led by Andrew Appel and some other big names on the east coast of the USA.