In the world around us we encounter two radically different views of programming: * View A: Programming in essence is very easy. * View B: Programming is intrinsically very difficult. EWD #540…

I don’t know if I can take hearing another self-aggrandizing nincompoop get up on stage and tout their amazing software Zack Morris, “The State of the Art is Terrible” (!)…

Let us now turn our attention to computing science. It is hated, of course, like any other science. In order to understand the specific distaste it evokes, and along with it all the pressures exerted…

In view of the preceding it becomes quite obvious why many earlier efforts to concoct Computing Science Curricula at our universities have been such dismal failures. They were just cocktails! For lack…

The confusion is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by the often expressed opinion that “one cannot use a programming language that has not been implemented”. But this is nonsense, of course one can! O…

Back, oh, eight years ago, a friend of mine had set up a private bulletin board for a bunch of us. In theory, the common theme was gaming (a bunch of us were moving from MMO to MMO like a herd of graz…

Operational : M ( P ) |= σ -> σ’ Denotational : M ( P ) |= κ -> P’ ie. In Operational semantics the meaning of a program is a transition function on a virtual machine, in Denotational semantic…

… the first challenge for computing science is to discover how to maintain order in a finite, but very large, discrete universe that is intricately intertwined. And a second, but not less important ch…

two such outstanding computing scientistsin order to save a file on his personal computer An anecdote by Dijkstra…

the material taught should have a staying power of, say, fifty yearsall material with a half-life of five years was bannedwere viewed as industrial products, and therefore not taught. EWD #1024…

By the time ALGOL 60 came around, this aspect had already created two completely different computing cultures. I remember a conversation in 1962, in Rome. We were sitting around a coffee table. One A…

Needless to say, this confusion between the score and the composition led to an underestimation of the intellectual challenges programming presents. EWD #1298…