Computer Science for Humanities
Tags: computerscience, opinion
Published: 2020-02-17 07:08:58

---
title: Computer Science for Humanities
published: true
date: 2014-11-25 13:02:21 UTC
tags: computer-science, opinion
canonical_url: https://lumochift.org/posts/computer-science-for-humanities/
---

> Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, biology about microscopes, or chemistry about beakers and test tubes. Science is not about tools. It is about how we use them, and what we find out when we do.— **Michael Fellows and Ian Parberry**

Imagine if today without computer technology, maybe we still doing everything in a manual way and paper everywhere without a gadget, internet connection, smart device, and many things. We are living in the computer era with a new lifestyle and the computer is really helpful to human being. But if you hear the computer science degree what are you thinking about at first? During my first semester in college, I imagine if I will learn software like photoshop, flash, fixing computer hardware, and game. I was wrong because I meet mathematics, programming, basic natural science, and other unexpected subjects.

> Computer science is a liberal art. It’s something everyone should know how to use and harness in their life.— **Steve Jobs**

My heart just rebel, why I got all of this. For what? Why I must enroll biology, physic, chemistry, calculus, linear algebra, numerical method, operation research, statistics, probability theorem, discrete mathematics and mathematics stuff which not related at all with computer science. Slow but sure finally I know if computer science is just tools which connected to other disciplines. Before goes to another discipline area, I want to share a story about basic mathematics in computer science. I’m too naive to hate mathematics at first then I realize every computer science subject base on mathematics.

Why learn calculus? because to calculate in advance subject at CS you will need them such as `digital image processing` you will face the integral, derivation. You must learn calculus and numerical method because the computer is finite and not continuous you must convert calculation from continuous to discrete so the computer can help you in computation.

If we want to create computer games, we must know about psychic, art, history, mathematics dan optimization. Like angry birds games, it converts the annoying parabolic theorems into the beautiful and funny computer game.

Bioinformatics, medical records, information systems, everything can be connected to computer science even the economic area like prediction stocks using `artificial intelligence`. Before we can do that we must learn about natural science, artificial intelligence, information systems, little accounting or every subject which supports what you do.

So computer science does not end up with calculation or computer itself but spread all across the different areas which unlimited scenarios that we can imagine.If you already put yourself into the computer science world, I hope we can support each other and make computer science easy to understand and fun to learn because computer science for humanity.