Genuine computer Scrience >Re: Autocoding project proposal.

[Christopher Browne]

Stefaan A Eeckels <Stefaan.Eeckels at ecc.lu> writes:
> On Mon, 28 Jan 2002 23:08:04 +0000
> philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) wrote:
>> Doesn't computer science deal with HCI and making computers easier
>> to use, then?

> Maybe it's in the curriculum. If the current crop of programs is
> anything to go by, they could as well have left it out.  In any
> case, it's about people, and how they react to devices (soft or
> hard). It's psychology, not comp.sci.

Certainly HCI isn't part of _pure_ computer science, and connecting it
requires a conscious connection to psychology.

It surely doesn't fall into the traditional areas of CS:
 - Algorithms
 - Numerical Analysis
 - Databases
 - Languages
 - Hardware Architecture
 - Operating Systems

The Association for Computing Machinery, "the" CS organization, does
have an HCI group (called SIGCHI).  It's only one of many special
interest groups.

I'd argue that HCI is _properly_ a secondary concern in computer
science.  

Computer science is about understanding what computers are, what they
can be made to do, and how to accomplish those things.

HCI doesn't fall into any of those three major categories.
-- 
(concatenate 'string "cbbrowne" "@acm.org")
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/emacs.html
The question  of whether a computer  can think is  no more interesting
than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra