Worth starting with “differences between Engineering and Science, in general”.

Engineering was able to predate Science by thousands of years because “things can be made/repaired/etc. in principled ways” without having to understand just why a working thing works. “Cookbooks” of things that are known to work, serve well (as indeed they still do in cooking).

Math started off very cookbooky also, and then was revolutionized by the pre-CE ideas of connected reasoning and proofs.

Science started off very cookbooky also, and the word originally meant “gathering of knowledge” (often via rather indirect ways). Both Engineering and Maths eventually had big influences on what Science thought it was about.

Two enormous leaps in the 17th century for what we call “Science” today were (a) Bacon’s call for “a new science” that should be centrally about dealing with “what’s wrong with our brains” via the invention of heuristics and technologies that can help us do better, and (b) the earliest really good scientific theories as (symbolic) working abstractions of what could be behind phenomena (Newton had predecessors, but he was so far off the charts that new charts were required). This started new qualitatively different paths, and a few more critical ones were added in the next few hundred years.

For example, the clarification between what is “in our heads” vs “what’s out there”. Einstein had a good saying for this: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”

An important way to think about this is that “Science” is neither the math, nor the theories, nor the phenomena, but the process of negotiation between them.

One of the byproducts of this “largest thought revolution” was that Engineering — which eventually would be revolutionized by Science — lagged more and more by not taking up Science as a main facet. Because Engineering is mainly about making things, and many things can be made without real understanding, it took quite a while for the engineering fields to even see what they were missing.

Today, we can think of the larger picture as a kind of Venn diagram of Tinkering, Engineering, Mathematics, and Science. The isolated subjects have their own properties and appeal to different personality types, but in practice, most of the best practitioners in any of these are very well versed in the others. This is worth pondering deeply.

One of the largest unifiers and lingua francas is *systems* — a large enough set of perspectives to constitute a whole area of its own.

When something breaks, valuable information and insights are often a byproduct. Many things engineers do affect the safety of people, so the equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath in Engineering is: “the building must not topple, the bridge must not fall, the plane must not crash”.

Good engineers try to break things under controlled conditions so they won’t break when deployed. Good scientists are always trying to break their creations, but know that they never have the final word.

Note: there can be “sciences of the artificial”* for example, a “science of bridges”. Once engineers build a bridge, it exudes phenomena which can lead scientists to better notions/”theories” of bridges. A lovely thing about our own time is the extent to which engineering and science can co-evolve both technologies and theories.

So: there can be a “science of computation” to go along with the many engineering activities that are required to make artifacts (both hardware and software).

The first Turing Award winner — Alan Perlis — was a “large mind” — and pointed out that the best scientific conception of the new field was “the study of processes: all processes”, and that computers themselves were both part of the “process world” and also could serve as the “new math” for representing the processes and notions being studied.

To me — an old fogey from the main research community back then — this seems like the best way to proceed for now (and this perspective really made a difference in my research community’s inventions of much of the interactive computing, media, and networking technologies in use today).

It’s easy to see that this perspective was has not been taken up by most of the people doing computing today. The main activities are more at the tinkering and “making without real understanding” levels than they should be.

The vast gold rush which started in the 80s has produced something more like a pop culture** with pop music and pop values (for example, just compare the ancient engineering morality of safety with the modern computing tendency to try to make things “from matchsticks and houses of cards” despite that much deeper knowledge on many of these issues does exist).

Part of the pop process was that many of the older meanings from back then got redefined downwards to the point where they no longer mean the same things. Examples are: “computer science”, “software engineering”, “OOP”, “AI”, etc.

Just as pop cultures can’t deal with non-linear processes such as the pandemic and the climate, the coupling of Moore’s Law to oversimplified notions of computing has produced not just a mess, but one that becomes ever more dangerous.

* see the great book by Herb Simon

** pop cultures can produce important things also — the big problem of our day is that commercialism has grown the pop cultures to be dominant rather than a small percentage for hobbies and harmless fun.

At the most basic level, computer science is a research and educational discipline, while software engineering is a practical discipline. The purpose of computer science is to expand the human knowledge base about computation, while the purpose of software engineering is to employ computation to solve problems. This doesn't make computer science better, or software engineering worse; they serve different purposes. Of course, there is a blurring of lines; among other things, computer scientist study and teach software engineering, and software engineering practices can and should be used in academia. The best and brightest of both worlds tend to influence beyond their home. However, it's fairly easy to place most people. While I was a software engineer and I do still write a fair bit of code, I am pretty clearly a computer scientist, as my primary responsibilities are teaching and research. Again, I want to be clear, that does not make me better or smarter or more important than a software engineer. The worst thing that we can do is assign inherent value to different fields and purposes.

This is CS.

Some sample from here would be :

Before you jump into stating this is “theory” - the topic is, quite literally the closest one can have with “software”.

So there goes your : “System Design”.

That would explain what is “Computer Science” I believe.

Specifically - for software Engineering I wrote a whole doc - it is freely available here.

Also read the reference section.

Again, we are talking about “Engineering using Software” - not some arbitrary code writing.

That is not Engineering. Code is code.

Just like a nut and a bolt is a nut and a bolt, and is neither thermodynamics nor an application of it.

I think Alan Kay has given a more detailed and extensive answer, but to summarize it, the main difference is that Software Engineering skills are in demand when practical applications of known principles in software building are required as to deliver a product or component in an agreed timeframe.

Computer Science skills are in demand when there is a need to formulate new theoretical principles or when complex problems arise where empirical knowledge is not enough (think of the theory behind handling concurrency in distributed systems or the maths behind RDBMS queries).

Both are complementary, as the principles established through CS are applied in real world situations thorough SE.

The difference between a scientist and an engineer in any discipline has to do with their goals. The primary goal of a scientist is to discover new knowledge. The primary goal of an engineer is to build a new artifact.

Put another way, a scientist builds things in order to learn, while an engineer learns things in order to build.

Computer scientists are studying computation. What can be computed? Among the things that can be computed, why are some things intrinsically easier to compute than others? What are the mathematical foundations of computation? How do these foundations relate to other fields? This is trying to learn more about computation.

Software engineers are building software systems. How can we describe solutions to problems in a form that computers can execute? How can problems be partitioned into pieces that can be constructed separately? How can we organize these systems so that they can be maintained and evolve over time? What are the cost tradeoffs in choosing one implementation over another? This is trying to get something built.

Both of them use programs, but programming isn’t really their primary function. It’s a tool to get something done. Computer scientists express computations as programs, software engineers build systems that include programs, but programming isn’t their main goal.

Science is about knowledge. The output of science is a paper that says, more or less “"this is the way the world works”. Engineering is about useful things. The output of engineering is a thingy that does something useful for somebody.

Engineering therefore uses science. Software science may say that a particular database structure is faster in some defined circumstance. Software engineering will decide that customer requirements match that circumstance, and therefore that structure is good for this particular project.

Both have their place. But I have to say that computer science is quite a small discipline, and most software engineering is much more craft than science. Software engineers are blacksmiths, not metallurgists.

Although computer science and software engineering do share much in common with respect to similar founsations in programming languages, they diverge as you branch away from that foundation.

Computer science, in its academic form, is in a way, a specialized branch of mathematics that discovers how to use algorithms and computers to solve problems, from a variety of quantitative fields. This is similar to how an astronomer uses a telescope to discover and understand space.

Software engineering is a form of applied computer science that focuses on how to use code to solve practical problems. You can think of a software engineer as being the mechanical engineer and the computer scientist the physicist, where the software engineer utilizes the best algorithmic structure the computer scientist discovers and proves.

The best way to notice the difference between the two is to see where the graduate level corusework goes. You'll probably see that CS research is more theoretical and conceptual mathematics, while SE may find ways to build those theories into practice with other engu,seeing fields, like embedded systems in robotics. But, at the bachelor level, both majors tend to fill similar roles.

The answer to this depends on the context.

If you are asking, "what is the difference in the work done by graduates of computer science and software engineering programs?" then the answer is in most situations, not much. Both types of graduates most commonly develop software of many different kinds using many different tools and processes. If you are an employer looking for somebody to develop software you would consider hiring either type of graduate in most situations. In fact, both types of graduates mostly do what likely ought to be called "engineering" since it involves building solutions to client problems by employing scientific principles, mathematics (e.g. boolean logic and other discrete math), technology and well-defined best practices.

If you are asking, "what different things will you learn in a computer science vs. a software engineering degree", then the differences become clearer. Both types of programs tend to have some common material (e.g. programming, data structures, discrete mathematics, professional ethics) but then diverge. A software engineering program will tend to cover in significant depth topics such as requirements analysis, quality assurance, large-system design and project management. A computer science program may only touch on these areas lightly. A computer science program on the other hand will tend to provide a wider selection of courses in sub-disciplines such as programming languages, databases, artificial intelligence and so on. Software engineering programs in many universities are also often required to provide exposure to other areas of engineering, and to cover material that is common to the rest of engineering (e.g. statics) which is not really needed by software engineers, but may be required for accreditation of any 'engineering' program in a particular jurisdiction. Computer science programs are accredited too, but the accreditation process cares about the computing topics, and is less rigid about how 'breadth of education' is covered.

Some employers will prefer to hire a software engineer because they value the focus on design and management in software engineering programs, or the general engineering ethos to which such graduates are likely to have been exposed. Employers and graduates may also value the opportunity for graduates to become licensed as an engineer, and to feel part of the engineering community. Some software engineering programs also cover topics not widely taught in computer science programs such as real-time systems or control systems, so employers developing these categories might prefer SE graduates.

Other employers might prefer computer science graduates due to the broader education they are likely to have achieved. For example many of them might have taken minors in other disciplines, to know many more programming languages.

Somebody who graduates from computer science would only actually practice as a 'scientist' if they take on a research career, developing the frontiers of topics such as theoretical computer science, databases, networks etc. The use of the term 'science' in the discipline is historical: at the time the field was established as an academic discipline, engineering was very 'hardware' oriented, and the emphasis had to be on doing research to learn how to best use computers.

Good Question,

Scientist vs Engineer

The main thing that separates a Scientist from an engineer is that, a Scientist engages in research and experimentation in hopes of contributing to and expanding the art. The engineer is skilled in applying the art.

Software Engineer vs Programmer

A programmer writes programs. That’s it. A Software Engineer defines, analyzes, designs, programs, tests and deploys software.

A Scientist uses the scientific method to record knowledge. Typically has 6+ years of education outside of high school.

An Engineer uses that knowledge to design of a product. Typically has 4–6 years of post high school education.

A Programmer creates the product based on a design. Typically has 0–2 years of post high school education.

Scientist (PHD) > Engineer(MS/BS) > Programmer(AS/HS)

My degree is in computer engineering. I learned how to design and build microcircuits. I also learned how to build microprocessors from the ground up, starting with metal and polysilicon, laying those out into transistors, putting those together into simple gates (and, xor, switches, etc.), and building increasingly complex blocks until you had a microprocessor that could execute actual real life binary instructions. Once you throw in bypassing, branch prediction, multiple execution pipelines, and all the other doo-dads, it becomes very complex.

One of my favorite projects involved making a game of Pong from scratch. I coded it in C and assembler, loaded that into a programmable microprocessor, and plugged that into a breadboard, then I attached an LCD display, speaker, and all of the pertinent wiring. The coup de grace was deciphering how a Nintendo controller functioned and connecting that to the breadboard. And then you could play Pong. It was awesome.

So I loved what I got to do for my degree…. and I’ve never used any of it. None of it. Ever. Have never and probably will never ever use it.

What I do now is programming. I build database driven web applications that store data via forms, integrations with other applications, etc. and then display that data in a variety of ways. That’s computer science. Other than a basic foundational knowledge of how computers and data structures function, it has almost nothing to do with computer engineering.

Of course, to a casual eye, “Computer Engineering” looks just as good on a resume as “Computer Science”. And mine happens to be from an Ivy League school.

But, the simplest answer to your question is to say that computer engineering deals primarily with hardware, whereas computer science deals primarily with software.

My degree is in computer engineering. I learned how to design and build microcircuits. I also learned how to build microprocessors from the ground up, starting with metal and polysilicon, laying those out into transistors, putting those together into simple gates (and, xor, switches, etc.), and building increasingly complex blocks until you had a microprocessor that could execute actual real life binary instructions. Once you throw in bypassing, branch prediction, multiple execution pipelines, and all the other doo-dads, it becomes very complex.

One of my favorite projects involved making a game of Pong from scratch. I coded it in C and assembler, loaded that into a programmable microprocessor, and plugged that into a breadboard, then I attached an LCD display, speaker, and all of the pertinent wiring. The coup de grace was deciphering how a Nintendo controller functioned and connecting that to the breadboard. And then you could play Pong. It was awesome.

So I loved what I got to do for my degree…. and I’ve never used any of it. None of it. Ever. Have never and probably will never ever use it.

What I do now is programming. I build database driven web applications that store data via forms, integrations with other applications, etc. and then display that data in a variety of ways. That’s computer science. Other than a basic foundational knowledge of how computers and data structures function, it has almost nothing to do with computer engineering.

Of course, to a casual eye, “Computer Engineering” looks just as good on a resume as “Computer Science”. And mine happens to be from an Ivy League school.

But, the simplest answer to your question is to say that computer engineering deals primarily with hardware, whereas computer science deals primarily with software.

In the generic sense, I like to relate the difference between computer science and software engineering to the difference between physics and mechanical engineering or chemistry and chemical engineering. One is a discipline of science and the other is a discipline of engineering. Science emphasizes theories and experiments to further knowledge. Engineering emphasizes design and construction of systems. However, the work of engineering is rooted in science - that is, science gives engineering the fundamental knowledge and principles to function.

In the context of educational programs, there’s not much of a difference. Although more schools are offering software engineering programs, many school still only offer computer science or consider software engineering as a track within a computer science degree program. After graduation, people from both types of programs often pursue the same jobs and career tracks.

In my personal educational experience, there was a distinct difference in course work between the BS Computer Science and BS Software Engineering programs. The Computer Science program was more theoretical and mathematical in nature, while Software Engineering focused on the processes, methods, and tools used to build software. The first year or so was roughly the same - Calculus, Discrete Mathematics, Statistics, the introductory Computer Science sequence, and an introduction to CS Theory. After that, they diverged. Some courses covered similar topics (distributed systems, concurrent systems, databases systems, AI, etc.) but from a theoretical (in CS) versus applied (in SE) context. CS also tended toward more mathematics and theory of computation while SE tended toward delivering software projects (requirements, architecture, project management, various process models).

To qualify my answer to this question, I have an MS in Computer Science, have managed developers for 18 years, and know a lot about software engineering.

Computer Science is about how. To develop algorithms to run on the computer. The emphasis is heavily based on mathematics. You will study things like operating systems, databases, and networks.

Software Engineering is about all the activities that take place from inception of a project to delivery with emphasis on the topics you need to know to have a well-functioning development team. You will learn about topics like requirements, estimating, architecture, and testing.

If you have to choose between the two majors, I would always choose Computer Science over Software Engineering. If you can't develop an excellent computer program, nothing else matters and you can pick up the software engineering skills easily enough in the job with some sled-study.

To draw an analogy with the medical world, you would study Computer Science if you wanted to be a Surgeon and you would study Software Engineering if you wanted to be the business manager for a hospital.

If you are considering a software engineering major, don't do that. It is tough to find a first job in development unless you are good at the hard technical skills. If you really wanted to do this type of work, just go for an MBA and you will ultimately be much better off.

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• Computer Science is the study of computation. It informs how we create software (ideally). Topics might be: Complexity, algorithms, models of computation, automata, … It is arguably a branch of discrete mathematics, and builds upon set theory, logic, etc.
  
• Computer Engineering is studying how computing machines are built. It informs how we build hardware. Topics might be: Hardware architectures, gates, instruction set design, digital communications … It overlaps digital electronics and physics.
  

So you see the word "computer" in "Computer science" is something of a misnomer. Perhaps "Computing science" might be more accurate.

The famous analogy used by Edsger Dijkstra (system scientist) was: "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."

Thanks for the A2A Caelen!

Short answer: Computer Science is a broader scientific field that surrounds almost all things about the computers you know (on a very high level of abstraction), including software. Software Engineering is a subject about building a very specific part of computers. The latter is technically a specialized subset of the former.

I have to say that Software Engineering is generally a loose term when used by the corporate and job market (and most people, including me). I’m not the most qualified for the specifics of this on academia, but from what I know Software Engineering as a subject is not as ubiquitous on the global academic community as CS is.

Long answer: Software Engineering is the use of engineering concepts on software. It specifies methods, techniques and tools to build and maintain (simplifying it) software on an objective, efficient and reproducible way (software has subjective topics too if humans use it or build it). It’s focused and specialized. Not all concepts of CS are needed for it’s successful application.

Computer Science is a subject of science about computations and how they can be practically executed and applied. I like Wikipedia’s second definition: “It is the systematic study of the feasibility, structure, expression, and mechanization of the methodical procedures (or algorithms) that underlie the acquisition, representation, processing, storage, communication of, and access to information.” This field studies concepts that are more abstract than modern computers and software. This is important for research on practical applications of how to build software and hardware, an how they interact.

I’m also used to a definition of Computer Engineering as a subject on academia. It’s defined as a subset of CS + Electrical Engineering, but I don’t know if that’s globally accepted.

Hope that helps. Best regards!

I am a Computer Engineering student. I will try to explain the differences but it will always depend on the university we are talking about.

Computer Engineer should understand the computer from the component level(microprocessor, memory and so on) to servers, web applications, android,networking and any thing you hear a computer science can do . In the other hand computer science focus only on the software level but he will always have to understand the basics of the computer hardware.

So we can simply conclude that Computer Engineering will have more hardware based courses but the majority will be software courses (depending on the university program) and all the courses in Computer science will be based on software and will be more than Computer Engineering courses but with other courses to explain the basics of the hardware .

I hope that this answer can help you ☺

Origins of CS

The primary difference is that computer science was originally a sub-branch of mathematics. This is now known as theoretical computer science. Modern applied computer science deals with algorithms and software. Where hardware is studied it is only to inform the design and development of algorithms and software. As such computer science can either be extremely mathematical and focus only on graph theory, combinatorics, computational complexity theory, axiomatic set theory and propositional logic. OR it can be more applied as is the case almost universally in university programmes.

Origins of CE

Computer engineering has very different origins as a sub-branch of electronic engineering, which itself is a sub-branch of electrical engineering. Electrical engineering itself emerged as a specialisation from engineering science at the turn of the 20th century.

In fact, even within electronic engineering the field of computer engineering emerges as a sub-branch of digital electronics. This is generally regarded as the "easier" electronics in the field, and stands in sharp contrast to analogue electronics which is legendarily difficult.

Difficulty of CS vs CE

I agree with the first half of answer Ken's answer but I don't entirely agree with his views on what's harder and what's not. It is true that in many countries engineering degrees tend to be harder or more rigorous than science degrees because it is, simultaneously, a science degree while also aiming to certify the practitioner and satisfy the professional requirements for admission to whatever necessary governing bodies. In the UK the engineering degrees are designed to be both academic enough to serve as a platform for further research while also meeting the stringent requirements to receive the title of Chartered Engineer with IMechE, IChemE, IEE (now, IET), etc. Hence, professionally accredited degrees in the UK are the BEng or MEng rather than the BSc or MSc. (Though an MEng is fundamentally different from an MSc too, but let's not get into that.)

But as far as the fields themselves are concerned I don't think a broad generalization can be made. Some topics in computer science are of extraordinary difficulty. In fact the P vs NP problem in computer currently stands as one of the greatest open problems in mathematics. The solution of which would guarantee a Fields Medal. Though, engineering science has its own equally difficult open problems such as the Yang-Mills existence and mass gap which is in the domain of electrical engineering, and the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem which is in fluid mechanics. (These three are Millenium Prize problems.)

Certainly, web development and database design can be considered "easier" than, say, VLSI or transmission line analysis, so "computer science" can be said to have easier topics, however there are also many very difficult topics in the field. (Furthermore, I question the classification of such topics as computer science. True computer science is theoretical computer science.)

Difficulty of CE vs EEE

One idea in Ken's answer that I reject is the idea that computer engineering is somehow more difficult than electrical engineering. This cannot be the case when one contains the other. Furthermore, this cannot be the case when computer engineering traditionally avoids or glosses over some of the most difficult topics in the field with which students struggle the most. These being, engineering electromagnetics and analogue electronics. One could call computer engineering a specialisation within digital electronics, and digital electronics is orders of magnitude easier and better understood than analogue.

Picking

In my case, I intentionally avoided picking the sub-specialization of computer engineering and stuck to general EEE because I found several of the easier courses were in the CE specialization, and because I had encountered most of the CE specific courses in CS. E.g. I really didn't need yet another course about networks. The one on designing radio telescopes was much more interesting.

One thing I must point out, however. It is a lot easier to teach yourself computer science than it is to teach yourself computer engineering because there is less of a strong reliance on background/prerequisites between topics in CS and less experimentation with real-world phenomena that can behave unpredictably -- I can't count the number of times an analogue signal conditioning circuit was displaying fine on the oscilloscope before lunch but mysteriously stopped working after.

So if you want to have less limits, study computer engineering and fill in the gaps of whatever area of CS or software engineering that you need.

Thanks for the A2A.

The principal difference is that Computer Engineering is about designing/building hardware, and Computer Science is about making that hardware dance (or more simply, do interesting things).

If you want to learn about circuits, how they’re constructing, how they’re integrated, and how ultimately perhaps billions of transistors work in concert to render a set of polygons or execute commands, then computer engineering is what you should study. You’ll also learn some physics (especially related to electricity) and electrical engineering, and you’ll even potentially learn some material science/chemical engineering (how chips are fabricated is exceptionally complex).

On the other hand, if you’re interested in seeing what computers can actually accomplish, then you should study CS. People in CS study how computation (the concept, not the circuitry) works, and how it can be applied to solve problems. Most computer scientists aren’t fundamentally interested in the theory of computation; they study everything from artificial intelligence to games to how people interact with computers.

One is not better or more important than the other; without CE, I wouldn’t have this absurdly sophisticated communication device that I’m writing on, but without CS, it would just be a hunk of hardware.

CS and CE get close to one another in some special areas. The most important of these areas is the operating system, where hardware functions are abstracted into executable function. Embedded systems used to be very CE-heavy because an embedded computer wasn’t typically very sophisticated, but now a typical embedded system will have a sophisticated processor, an appropriate amount of RAM, and even an operating system.

Do be aware that the world needs far more people in IT (including software development) than it needs to design computing hardware. CS is not training for IT jobs per se, but it often includes learning a great number of skills that can be effectively translated into employment. Depending on who you’re asking and how you are counting, there may be more people with degrees in CE working in IT than working in designing computing hardware. Then again, I became a software developer, and my undergrad majors were history and English.

Good luck!

It's a matter of what gets treated as a black box.

Computer science is more about the theoretical mathematics that computing systems are based on than they are about the computing systems themselves. Discrete math (set theory, graph theory, formal logic), algorithms (searching, sorting, regex), operating systems, user interaction with computers, networking, and software engineering principles. You don't have to understand any of the electronic stuff happening underneath it all to be a good computer scientist, although understanding a little bit of it can be useful at times.

Computer engineering, on the other hand, is a lot more about the computing system itself. Digital circuits, signal processing, embedded systems (interfacing computers to things that are not computers), computer architecture. You do get to do a lot of programming, true, but the focus is quite different.

In theory, practice and theory are the same, in practice, well…

Computer Scientist is more academic in nature and is focused on theory and ideas. A computer scientist is interested in the perfect state.

Software Engineer is practice and execution, writing software that runs in production. A software engineer understand that imperfect software running and achieving goals today is better than perfect software at some theoretical point in the future.

Just to be clear, both are important. Without Computer Scientists, Software Engineers wouldn’t exist, and vice versa. We need each other for us to advance.

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Computer science is a science. As such, the main goal is to understand how computers work and the ways in which we can use computers to solve new types of problems. Computer scientists generally approach this from a software perspective. They examine different ways to arrange data in computers and develop algorithms to solve problems in a computational way. Computer scientists want to use computers to do cool things.

Computer engineering is more about the design of computer systems and devices. This can be both hardware and software, but it generally deals with the interaction between the two. Things like how processors should be designed might fall under computer engineering (although electrical engineers and computer scientists work on this as well). Also, designing the architecture for electronics (i.e. this cell phone should include X processor, Y graphics chip, and Z wireless chip) would fall under computer engineering. Knowing how much memory and computing power the system needs would be the work of a computer engineer.

The answer is in the names - science vs. engineering. Discovering knowledge vs. applying knowledge. Kind of like physics vs. mechanical (electrical, civil, nuclear) engineering.

Computer science is a specialized branch of mathematics. Your goal is a proof, not a working piece of software. You'll learn to program, but each program you write is like the test apparatus in a physics experiment. No matter how sophisticated it is, its purpose is to prove a point - not to create economic value. Sometimes code written in a CS context is useful enough to live on in a more practical context, but it usually has to be "upgraded" to survive the rigors of non-experimental use.

Software engineering is about actually making useful and/or economically valuable things. Its practitioners must use knowledge from CS, much as a mechanical engineer must use knowledge from physics, but they also need more practical skills - testing, release engineering, requirements management, user experience, security, even some psychology and people management.

Academic programs in software engineering are still pretty rare. Some of them are indistinguishable from CS programs. Others seem incomplete and/or oddly divorced from the actual practice of software engineering. To be honest, I have yet to see a good one, and I wouldn't expect the new-hire learning process to be any shorter or easier for a "software engineering" grad than for a CS grad.

If your goal is "better employment and higher pay" then you will definitely want to pursue a career in software engineering, but you're probably better off starting off with a CS degree. One option that does work to instill practical as well as theoretical knowledge is a CS department with a co-op program. Internships and involvement in open-source projects both work as well. A good grounding in CS plus some practical experience looks great on a resume, and is an excellent foundation for a software engineering career.

Well, it depends because those two things could mean anything from that they are equivalent to that one is about drawing circuits and the other is about discreet mathematics, respectively.

It’s most likely that the latter definition is most fitting though. Computer Science is primarily about a kind of discreet math (logic, analysis, set theory) while computer engineering is a cross-discipline engineering between material engineering and electrical engineering.

Obviously they need to meet in the middle, at the computer. That is why both degrees will have an overlap.

You can imagine a computer that completes any algorithm in constant time. It’s simple. Making your computer execute each instruction in half the time of the previous instruction. The sum of how long that takes converges to twice the length of the first instruction. You can use this idea to prove that the halting problem and similar classes of problems aren’t a matter of the computer not being fast enough, but instead about separating what is computable from what is not computable. Furthermore, you can imagine a computer that, in between two instructions, copies itself, including its infinitely long tape with a potentially infinite number of symbols on it… in constant time. That idea is used to prove that non-deterministic Turing machines don’t compute anything more than deterministic Turing machines. That kind of Science falls into the realm of Computer Science, but not Computer Engineering.

You can build a logic gate out of coconuts. No big deal. Water flowing represents 1. Water not flowing represents zero. If you’re careful and physically minded, you can make up an and, or, and nor gate using coconuts and from there you can construct any binary circuit. Knowing that such a thing is trying to lead to representing and calculating information in binary, you know that the material isn’t quite up to the task. You know you’re trying to make faster logic circuits, you would not start with coconuts, even though a Gilligan’s Island Coconut Computer sounds awesome. For example, someone made an adder circuit using only dominoes. Also, if you were trying, for some reason, to draw an analogy between water flowing with electricity flowing, you would need to know that your water, in some cases, can evaporate right out of one coconut and condense in another nearby coconut, in that analogy. It makes no sense until you understand quantum mechanics. This kind of engineering falls into the realm of Computer Engineering, but not Computer Science.

And yes, these were silly ideas that stuck with my from my RPI Computer Science undergraduate degree. Silly ideas tend to impress me. What is not silly, but still impressive, is that you learn how modern computers are build on systems on top of systems on top of systems on top of systems connected to the same. You will be able to read this message I wrote long after I have forgotten it. When you’re done with your degree, it will impress you. Hopefully. I assume you won’t find computing utterly banal at that point.

It's analogous to the difference between Physics and Civil engineering.

Computer science is similar to Physics.

• CS is very abstract, and all about constructing models and seeing what they can be made to do.

• CS is all about the algorithms, the “computer” part is incidental.

Software engineering has a similar attitude and function as Civil engineering.

• When Physics produces a new process the Civil engineer looks at it and asks, “Can this scale?”. When Computer science produces a new algorithm, the Software engineer looks at it and asks, “Can this scale?”

• When Physics produces a new material, the Civil engineer immediately starts evaluating what you can do with it, and if it makes sense to use it in the real world. When Computer science produces a new data structure, the Software engineer immediately starts evaluating what you can do with it, and if it makes sense to use it in a production environment.