Programming Is One Of The Most Difficult

Yes, I Share Your Concern: How To Program Well -though A Teachable Topic- Is Hardly Taught. The Situation Is Similar To That In Mathematics, Where The Explicit Curriculum Is Confined To Mathematical Results; How To Do Mathematics Is Something The Student Must Absorb By Osmosis, So To Speak. One Reason For Preferring Symbol-manipulating, Calculating Arguments Is That Their Design Is Much Better Teachable Than The Design Of Verbal/pictorial Arguments. Large-scale Introduction Of Courses On Such Calculational Methodology, However, Would Encounter Unsurmoutable Political Problems.

Much Of The Excitement We Get Out Of Our Work Is That We Don't Really Know What We Are Doing.

Don't Blame Me For The Fact That Competent Programming, As I View It As An Intellectual Possibility, Will Be Too Difficult For The Average Programmer, You Must Not Fall Into The Trap Of Rejecting A Surgical Technique Because It Is Beyond The Capabilities Of The Barber In His Shop Around The Corner.

We Must Be Very Careful When We Give Advice To Younger People; Sometimes They Follow It!

Our Intellectual Powers Are Rather Geared To Master Static Relations And That Our Powers To Visualize Processes Evolving In Time Are Relatively Poorly Developed. For That Reason We Should Do (as Wise Programmers Aware Of Our Limitations) Our Utmost To Shorten The Conceptual Gap Between The Static Program And The Dynamic Process, To Make The Correspondence Between The Program (spread Out In Text Space) And The Process (spread Out In Time) As Trivial As Possible.