Talk:List of basic computer science topics

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 24 February 2006. The result of the discussion was no consensus.
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Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (January 2007)

Any idea why this page was moved to Wikipedia:Computer science basic topics ? Jay 06:55, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)

ok issue resolved. Page was moved back. Jay 08:14, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Hardware

I have no idea why this page is called Computer science basic topics. It seems more like programming language basic topics. --Powo 10:18, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

So I started a section for the hardware topics that are missing. Perhaps separate section needed for the people of software engineering and related concepts? User:AlMac|(talk) 11:18, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure that hardware topics are appropriate here, as they aren't generally considered "computer science" beyond secondary schools. Usually that falls under information technology, computer engineering, information systems, and the like... --bmills 18:11, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
This list is crap. —Ruud 18:25, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

So, if

  • Powo thinks this list is incomplete because it is pretty much limited to programming concepts, while
  • bmills thinks hardware inappropriate to include here,
  • Should Wikipedia have other lists of basic concepts in other categories
    • hardware
    • types of computers
    • skills
  • then cross-link those specialized lists?

User:AlMac|(talk) 07:09, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm wondering if this list is even appropriate in the encyclopedia at all. I mean, there's a WikiBooks CS section and a Wikiversity CS school, not to mention the CS portal and the CS category. That pretty much covers instruction, basics, and comprehensive lists. --bmills 18:31, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Although I can't speak for Powo, I'm guessing that his objection wasn't to do with the lack of hardware topics (which as bmills rightly points out aren't usually considered part of CS anyway), but rather the fact that it left out key CS topics which go beyond programming, such as computability, computational complexity, automata theory, formal semantics of programming languages, type theory, concurrency, and the like. -- Allan McInnes 17:22, January 29, 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portal:Computing

Perhaps there is a need for list in Portal format, of major collections of computer articles, formatted similar to Portal:Browse. User:AlMac|(talk) 05:00, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

See Portal:Computer Science. --bmills 16:10, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite

Having seen this article listed as needing attention, I have undertaken a rewrite. Hopefully this rewrite addresses some of the concerns which were earlier raised on this page. I have tried to follow the style of the List of basic mathematical topics, which is a mix of broad topic areas and fundamental concepts. I'm sure I've left some key things out (or put some things in that shouldn't really be there). But this new list can hopefully serve as a starting point from which to converge on something everyone is happy with. --Allan McInnes (talk) 07:21, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Looks great to me — now it's actually about CS rather than just programming. --bmills 14:47, 10 February 2006 (UTC)