Computing starts with the idea of the algorithm, a recipe for accomplishing a task such as planning a spacecraft trajectory, enabling a robotic vehicle to travel a desert road unaided, or finding the best possible answers to your web query.
Computer science is the field that encompasses all of the intellectual activities necessary to take an algorithm from idea to practice. That includes constructing the computer using Boolean Algebra and digital logic, designing the operating systems that run computers, creating programming languages that let us easily transform ideas into code, and developing software methodologies that ensure robust programs.
Computer scientists also develop and analyze the algorithms that reach into biology, chemistry, physics, economics and business, that are transforming mathematical research and that provide new tools and media for art and music. The discipline of computer science examines, at one extreme, the core question of what can be computed and at the other, whether the combination of algorithms and computers can lead to intelligence. In between these limits, it continues to produce new ideas that change how people work, play, and interact with each other.
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