Here is Allen Newell, Alan Perlis, and Herbert Simon's response (1967) to your question about whether computer science is even science. For context, the three of them are Turing Award winners and early pioneers of computer science. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~choset/whatiscs.html
Professors of computer science are often asked: "Is there such a thing as computer science, and if there is, what is it?" The questions have a simple answer:
Wherever there are phenomena, there can be a science to describe and explain those phenomena. Thus, the simplest (and correct) answer to "What is botany?" is, "Botany is the study of plants." And zoology is the study of animals, astronomy the study of stars, and so on. Phenomena breed sciences.
There are computers. Ergo, computer science is the study of computers. The phenomena surrounding computers are varied, complex, rich. It remains only to answer the objections posed by many skeptics.
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What people in US call computer science, in Portugal is a math degree major, mostly called something like Computing Applied Maths.
Computer related degrees are called Informatics Engineering, where computer science subjects are mixed with software engineering content, the degree is certficied by Engineerings Order, and is protected professional title.
Or you have Business Informatics, more tailored to current software being used in companies with little theory, more focused in management stuff.
Some people might call pure math a “science”, but this is at the very least applied math (ie more connected to physical reality than pure math).
It even makes the case as to why not:
> This usually means that there are an enormous number of possible executions, and testing can examine only a tiny fraction of them.
