Talk:Theoretical computer science/Archive 1

Archive 1

History section is ahistorical

By all accounts, the term computer science did not appear until the early 60s. Early 20th century information science was conducted under a variety of other labels that do not align with the current disciplinary boundary and including them all without explanation is ahistorical. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.225.211.126 (talk) 18:22, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Since new revision, a variety of TCS areas are now missing

Since the major revision a variety of important areas of TCS are now missing. For example, Combinatorial Optimization is completely absent from the article now, likewise most of the Discrete Mathematics fields (e.g., Combinatorics, Graph Theory) that intersect TCS. These should be included, even if we were to bring back the subject or topic box that was previously on the page. Computability Theory, one of the most foundation fields of TCS is absent as well (I am aware of the last sentence given in the CCT section, the name of the field should be present). I also find the algorithm definition to be ambiguous with respect to what theoreticians in TCS actually use as the definition for an algorithm. E.g. An algorithm is a non-ambiguous step-by-step procedure that takes in input, and produces output in a finite number of steps (I've seen some def. not include the finite part, since you can make incorrect algorithms). A correct algorithm will produce correct output for all instances of a problem. We describe algorithms with respect to problems typically in TCS. The current page does not accurately describe TCS, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. I recommend these changes are made or at least incorporated if anybody gets time. I think the major revision removed a lot of fields that were here before, even if they are mentioned (e.g., Combinatorial Optimization, Graph Theory, Combinatorics, Computability Theory, etc..). I temporarily have included the old table from the old version until all the fields we used to have on the page are included as those fields are very traditionally seen to intersect TCS and are active areas of TCS. 24.246.17.80 (talk) 01:29, 25 November 2014 (UTC)