Commentaries on Perlis's Epigrams in Programming

The Mole once again had professional reason to refer colleagues to Perlis's Epigrams. And once again as usual the Mole took a moment to skim through the list (having pulled it up in a browser to verify the link). The epigram that caught his eye on this occasion -- which was not the one where the thread had started -- was #112: "Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.".

Several months ago the Mole went to a talk by Peter J. Denning at the Computer History Museum. Now the Mole really wanted to enjoy and be impressed by the talk. The Mole has a high opinion of Denning; the Mole has enjoyed reading Denning's columns over the years; the Mole even frequently points to the "Ladder of Competence" in Denning's September 2002 column, "Career Redux".

The Mole was disappointed. The Mole was further disappointed when the ideas reappeared in the latest Communications of the ACM (as "Computing is a Natural Science"). It's not that they are bad ideas. They're very good ideas. The problem is that the Professor doth protest too much, methinks.

As Perlis said, "Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.".