Computer science is the study of algorithms - what is described here may be best described as software engineering. As an educator who has been involved in computer science education for almost a decade, I find the code-centric approach described here to be counterproductive.
Underlying our approach to this subject is our conviction that 'computer science' is not a science and that its significance has little to do with computers. The computer revolution is a revolution in the way we think and in the way we express what we think. The essence of this change is the emergence of what might best be called procedural epistemology -- the study of the structure of knowledge from an imperative point of view, as opposed to the more declarative point of view taken by classical mathematical subjects. Mathematics provides a framework for dealing precisely with notions of 'what is.' Computation provides a framework for dealing precisely with notions of 'how to.'
"[As] opposed to other kinds of engineering, where the constraints on what you can build are the constraints of physical systems ... the constraints imposed in building large software systems are the limitations of our own minds."
Time to peruse my bookshelf for other inspiring quotes.
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD02xx/E...
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/E...
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/E...
Thank you for taking the time to add the EWD links, I'm sure others reading this thread will find them as enlightening as I do.
But it's also important to remember that Software Engineering is not Computer Science.
Also, a 4-year-long course of study in Software Engineering should definitely cover things aside from coding. Some Computer Science for sure, but also the basics of business, ethics, economics, politics, psychology, and so on.
I don't know the answer to that question, but I recall that my introductory physics courses and labs focused a fair deal on the practical part of understanding how things worked in the world, not just talking about theory 100% of the time.
(Though I don't know how either "computer science as pure science" or "software engineering as pure engineering" would actually work in the first place, though.)
The key is to differentiate the role of the computer from the role of the scientist. A computer is just an efficient tool for making discoveries in computer science, but it hardly represents what computer science is all about. Similarly, a telescope is a tool for discovering the realities of the universe, just like a microscope is a tool for biological discoveries. Certainly we need physicists to deal with the practical problems that affect our day-to-day lives, but the most high-profile work in physics aims to explore the unknown. In physics this is the nature of the universe - in computer science, it is the nature of computation and its limitations.