Computer science has a number of major sub-fields which can be classified by a number of means (for example the ACM classification system).
- Algorithms
- formal processes used for computation, and the efficiency of these processes
- Applications
- design and development software for everyday use
- Artificial intelligence
- implementation and study of systems that exhibit (either behaviourally or seemingly) an autonomous intelligence or behaviour of their own, sometimes inspired by the characteristics of living beings. Computer science is closely tied with AI, as software and computers are primary tools for the development and progression of artificial intelligence
- Compilers
- ways of efficiently translating algorithms from one form (usually a programming language) to another
- Computational complexity theory
- fundamental bounds (esp. time and storage space) on computations
- Computer programming
- the act of writing algorithms in a programming language
- Computer graphics
- algorithms both for generating visual images synthetically and for integrating or altering visual and spatial information sampled from the real world
- Computer vision
- algorithms for extracting three dimensional objects from a two dimensional picture
- Cryptography
- algorithms for protecting private data, including encryption
- Data mining
- the process of sorting through large amounts of data and picking out relevant information.; closely related to information retrieval
- Data structures
- the organization and storage of data
- Networking
- algorithms and protocols for reliably communicating data across long distances, often including error correction
- Operating systems
- systems for managing computer programs and data structures
- Programming languages
- formal languages for expressing algorithms and the properties of these languages
- Robotics
- algorithms for controlling the behavior of robots
- Scientific computing
- algorithms for use in the sciences, especially (but not exclusively) biology (as in bioinformatics), physics, and chemistry
- Software engineering
- the process of designing, developing, and testing programs
- Steganography
- algorithms for covertly hiding data in seemingly unrelated documents, such as graphics
- Type Theory
- formal analysis of the types of data, and the use of these types to understand properties of programs, especially program safety
