In his inaugural lecture at the Queen’s University of Belfast, Tony Hoare asks what gives computer science its identity as a single discipline, rather than a loose collection of related subjects. His answer is that its central core is the art of programming a computer.

Hoare was writing at a time when computing drew on mathematics, engineering and other established fields, and its standing as a subject in its own right was not yet settled. By locating the discipline’s centre in programming, he sought to distinguish it from its neighbours and to give it a defining purpose.

His choice of the word “art” is deliberate. For Hoare, writing good programs called for judgement, elegance and clarity as well as technical skill. The claim reflects his wider conviction that programming deserved serious intellectual and academic attention.

Full quotation

“Having surveyed the relationships of computer science with other disciplines, it remains to answer the basic questions: What is the central core of the subject? What is it that distinguishes it from the separate subjects with which it is related? What is the linking thread which gathers these disparate branches into a single discipline? My answer to these questions is simple—it is the art of programming a computer. It is the art of designing efficient and elegant methods of getting a computer to solve problems, theoretical or practical, small or large, simple or complex. It is the art of translating this design into an effective and accurate computer program. This is the art that must be mastered by a practising computer scientist; the skill that is sought by numerous advertisements in the general and technical press; the ability that must be fostered and developed by computer science courses in universities.”