Exploring Computer Science

What are the concerns and goals of computer science?

What are the foundations?

What are its methods?

What is its academic content?

What are some good ways of teaching it?

In what way is computer science related to mathematics?

These are the large questions I would like to address in this blog. I know that I am not competent to address such grand themes, but my hope is that the very effort to formulate answers to these questions will help me grow. Besides, there are real experts out there. Some of them may feel like helping me out.

Several computer scientists, friends, colleagues, and students have been helping me in my studies. Will acknowledge their help when I refer to it. However, I would like to acknowledge right at the beginning the help, guidance, and mentoring I have received from Prof. Kesav Nori. In a series of conversations around the year 2000 he communicated to me the essential concerns of the discipline and pointed out the direction I had to travel, and, more importantly, the directions I could temporarily ignore. Since then, I have relied on him to show me the way out of every thicket I got into. But for him, I would have not been able to make any progress at all in my understanding of this fascinating area.

My work of about seven years has been summarized in the book "An Introduction to Mathematical Computer Science". You can know more about the book from here.