An Introduction toComputer Science

CSE Studies How Computers Work and How to Make Them Work Better Architecture

Designing machines Programming languages and compilers

Telling them what to do Operating systems and networks

Controlling them and communicating between them Graphics, vision, music, human-computer interaction, information

retrieval, genomics, ...: Using them

Artificial intelligence and machine learning Making them smarter

Algorithms, complexity What are the limits and why

Computer Science vs Computer Engineering Computing Systems are Cyber-physical systems

Physical Part: hardware, stored software and data Cyber Part: active (running) software, behavior

Computer Engineering is how to engineer the physical part to have best performance (speed, efficiency etc).

Computer Science is how to engineer the cyber part to best fit the purposes: optimize resources (time, hardware), optimize human-computer interaction etc.

Breathe Life Into MatterGolem (Jewish mythology) “Automata”, (South Germany

or Spain, c. 1560)

Also, chess

automata

Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)

Robot

(Karel Capek,

1921)

Breathing Life: A Modern Perspective

“Matter”: Atoms, molecules, quantum mechanics, relativity …

“Life”: Cells, nucleus, DNA, RNA, …

“Breath life into matter”: Computation

One interpretation: Make matter do useful,

interesting things on its own

Computational Universe

Important Distinctions

Computer Science vs. Computer Programming

(Java, C++, etc.)

Notion of computation vs. Concrete Implementations of Computation (Silicon chips, robots, Xbox, etc.)

Example: Web crawler

Start with a base list of popular Web sites Download the Web pages and extract hyperlinks Download these Web pages, too And repeat, and repeat, and repeat…

Web indexing Identify keywords in pages Identify popular pages that many point to

Web searching Respond in less than a second to user queries

Example: Computational Biology

Old Biology New Biology

Microarrays

Pathways