Machines have come a long way since their inception. They have evolved from being mere mechanical devices to intelligent systems that can perceive the world around them. But how do computer scientists perceive machines? And how does this perception differ from other fields of study like mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, or electronics engineering?
Mechanical engineers view machines as physical systems that can perform mechanical tasks. They design machines that can lift heavy loads, move objects, and perform other physical tasks. Electrical engineers, on the other hand, view machines as electrical systems that can perform electrical tasks. They design machines that can generate, transmit, and use electrical power. Electronics engineers view machines as electronic systems that can perform electronic tasks. They design machines that can process, store, and transmit electronic signals.
Computer scientists view machines as a black box which takes one or multiple inputs and produce one or multiple outputs. While generating outputs from input, the black box might or might not change its physical attributes (known as Global States or simply as State). So, computer science people do not want to know whether there is any mechanical equipment or electrical circuits or electronics IC inside that black box or not. They are only interested about describing the black box, from an abstract level, only through its input, outputs and state change behaviour.
Let us take a Bulb as a machine as shown in the figure above. Computer Science people would consider only two states of it Glowing & Not Glowing, two inputs Voltage & No Voltage and two outputs Light & No Light. The explicit behaviour of this machine has been shown at the top whereas the behaviour has been shown schematically through a graph (Known as State Transition Graph). Computer Science people would be happy to study the bulb like this, not considering its implementation details like filament and other factors.
