datamatik, sb. (the study of) proper data management in computerized systems [1966]

In this first blog post I will question the name of the blog.

The word “datamat” is an anachronism: Coined in the 1960s when references to computers became mainstream, and Danish popular culture had not yet been engulfed by American English. It’s called “computer” now, also in Danish.

While “datamat” is a funny, old-fashioned way to describe your computer, “datamatik” is so out of fashion that nobody even uses the word jokingly. Its cousin, “datalogi” is used by the university study programme.

Datamatiker, the study programme

A word that does survive today is “datamatiker”. The datamatiker study programme in Denmark was founded in 1984 and so celebrated its 40th birthday last year. Datamatiker is a 2.5 year business academy study programme, so shorter than a BSc degree. The Danish educational system has normalised around 3 years for a BSc, which makes the datamatiker study programme seem very lightweight. Students can extend their degree by 1.5 years with a so-called “professional bachelor’s degree”, which is like a BSc but not at a university. Or they can go work in industry right away. The datamatiker employment rate after one year is 80-90%.

Both datalogi and datamatik translate into Computer Science, and both are really better terms than Computer Science, since they don’t have the word “Science” in it. (The natural sciences don’t have it, either.)

While the etymology of -logi simply means “the science of”, -matik means something like “the technical or systematic process of”. My interpretation of this distinction is that in datamatik, we do not question so often why something works, but rather just how it works on the surface.

Datamatiker is taught at 8 business academies in Denmark, and schools share the same study programme regulations. To make the same set of regulations fit 8 schools, they are formulated very loosely. For example, it doesn’t say anywhere that Java must be used, but it just happens that almost everyone does use Java.

2.5 years is a short time, and the framework is very flexible, which makes it very interesting to teach.