Month: March 2020
Getting a program right, in nine episodes
About this article: it originated as a series of posts on the Communications of the ACM blog. I normally repost such articles here. (Even though copy-paste is usually not good, there are three reasons for this duplication: the readership seems to be largely disjoint; I can use better formatting, since their blog software is more … Read more
A little Schubertiade to brighten the gloom
For some time I have been nudging (yes, I am that kind of person) two young boys in my family, two cousins who are both learning the piano, to try Schubert’s delightful (and not very military) Marche Militaire together. With not much success until recently… but now they are stuck in their (neighboring) homes, and … Read more
Notations you didn’t even know you could use
Consider the following expression: ∃ c: s ¦ moisture (c) = soft This is obviously mathematics. To express such a property in a programming language, you have to write a function containing a loop that iterates through the elements of s. Right? Wrong. The above construct is valid Eiffel. It’s a consequence of recent … Read more
Serious newspapers: now is the moment to unlock Coronavirus material, or incur eternal shame
In my last article, time to live up to the boasting, I pointed out how bewildering it is to see that top newspapers around the world, the supposed “papers of reference”, continue both to: Extoll their grandiose proclamations of supposed devotion to public service. Charge for access to the epidemic that is scaring the world. … Read more
Time to live up to the boasting
The decent media is not modest these days. “Democracy Dies in Darkness” says the excellent Washington Post, intimating, if I understand it right, that the only way for the US to avoid dictatorship is that I pay subscription fees. Maybe I would if they just stopped devoting every single one of their articles to King … Read more
In the scary land of irrational discourse
A chemistry researcher published a paper in Science with two junior collaborators and, a few months later, found flaws and retracted the article. She commented “I am totally bummed to announce that we have retracted last year’s paper on enzymatic synthesis of beta-lactams” and “it is painful to admit, but important to do so” and … Read more
Getting your priorities right
In the restrooms of French freeway service stations managed by Total, the soap dispensers partake of pressing advice: The message reads: ONLY ONCE Press for clean hands 1x Total wants to save on costs. Soap is money. Fine. But on the matter of hand-washing one might (perhaps) think, in the current circumstances, of more urgent … Read more