What is Computer science

Computer science is the field of computer hardware and software. It includes systems analysis & design, application and system software design and programming and datacenter operations. For young students, the emphasis is typically on learning a programming language or running a computer with little attention to information science, the study of information and its uses.

Computer science is a discipline that involves the understanding and design of computers and computational processes. In its most general form it is concerned with the understanding of information transfer and transformation. Particular interest is placed on making processes efficient and endowing them with some form of intelligence. The discipline ranges from theoretical studies of algorithms to practical problems of implementation in terms of computational hardware and software. A central focus is on processes for handling and manipulating information. Thus, the discipline spans both advancing the fundamental understanding of algorithms and information processes in general as well as the practical design of efficient reliable software and hardware to meet given specifications. Computer science is a young discipline that is evolving rapidly from its beginnings in the 1940's. As such it includes theoretical studies, experimental methods, and engineering design all in one discipline. This differs radically from most physical sciences that separate the understanding and advancement of the science from the applications of the science in fields of engineering design and implementation. In computer science there is an inherent intermingling of the theoretical concepts of computability and algorithmic efficiency with the modern practical advancements in electronics that continue to stimulate advances in the discipline. It is this close interaction of the theoretical and design aspects of the field that binds them together into a single discipline.

Computer science has many sub-fields; some emphasize the computation of specific results (such as computer graphics), while others relate to properties of computational problems (such as computational complexity theory). Still others focus on the challenges in implementing computations. For example, programming language theory studies approaches to describing computations, while computer programming applies specific programming languages to solve specific computational problems. A further subfield, human-computer interaction, focuses on the challenges in making computers and computations useful, usable and universally accessible to people.

Because of the rapid evolution it is difficult to provide a complete list of computer science areas. Yet it is clear that some of the crucial areas are theory, algorithms and data structures, programming methodology and languages, and computer elements and architecture. Other areas include software engineering, artificial intelligence, computer networking and communication, database systems, parallel computation, distributed computation, computer-human interaction, computer graphics, operating systems, and numerical and symbolic computation.

Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language that can be used to control the behavior of a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages, like natural languages, are defined by syntactic and semantic rules which describe their structure and meaning respectively. Many programming languages have some form of written specification of their syntax and semantics; some are defined only by an official implementation. Programming languages are used to facilitate communication about the task of organizing and manipulating information, and to express algorithms precisely. Some authors restrict the term "programming language" to those languages that can express all possible algorithms, sometimes the term "computer language" is used for more limited artificial languages. Thousands of different programming languages have been created, and new languages are created every year.