The French School of Programming
July 14 (still here for 15 minutes) is not a bad opportunity to announced the publication of a new book: The French School of Programming.
The book is a collection of chapters, thirteen of them, by rock stars of programming and software engineering research (plus me), preceded by a Foreword by Jim Woodcock and a Preface by me. The chapters are all by a single author, reflecting the importance that the authors attached to the project. Split into four sections after chapter 1, the chapters are, in order:
1. The French School of Programming: A Personal View, by Gérard Berry (serving as a general presentation of the subsequent chapters).
Part I: Software Engineering
2. “Testing Can Be Formal Too”: 30 Years Later, by Marie-Claude Gaudel
3. A Short Visit to Distributed Computing Where Simplicity Is Considered a First-Class Property, by Michel Raynal
4. Modeling: From CASE Tools to SLE and Machine Learning, by Jean-Marc Jézéquel
5. At the Confluence of Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction: A Personal Account, by Joëlle Coutaz
Part II: Programming Language Mechanisms and Type Systems
6. From Procedures, Objects, Actors, Components, Services, to Agents, by Jean-Pierre Briot
7. Semantics and Syntax, Between Computer Science and Mathematics, by Pierre-Louis Curien
8. Some Remarks About Dependent Type Theory, by Thierry Coquand
Part III: Theory
9. A Personal Historical Perspective on Abstract Interpretation, by Patrick Cousot
10. Tracking Redexes in the Lambda Calculus, by Jean-Jacques Lévy
11. Confluence of Terminating Rewriting Computations, by Jean-Pierre Jouannaud
Part IV: Language Design and Programming Methodology
12. Programming with Union, Intersection, and Negation Types, by Giuseppe Castagna
13, Right and Wrong: Ten Choices in Language Design, by Bertrand Meyer
What is the “French School of Programming”? As discussed in the Preface (although Jim Woodcock’s Foreword does not entirely agree) it is not anything defined in a formal sense, as the variety of approaches covered in the book amply demonstrates. What could be more different (for example) than Coq, OCaml (extensively referenced by several chapters) and Eiffel? Beyond the differences, however, there is a certain je ne sais quoi of commonality; to some extent, in fact, je sais quoi: reliance on mathematical principles, a constant quest for simplicity, a taste for elegance. It will be for the readers to judge.
Being single authors of their chapters, the authors felt free to share some of their deepest insights an thoughts. See for example Thierry Coquand’s discussion of the concepts that led to the widely successful Coq proof system, Marie-Claude Gaudel’s new look at her seminal testing work of 30 years ago, and Patrick Cousot’s detailed recounting of the intellectual path that led him and Radhia to invent abstract interpretation.
The French School of Programming
Edited by Bertrand Meyer
Springer, 2024. xxiv + 439 pages
Book page on Springer site
Amazon US page
Amazon France page
Amazon Germany page
The book is expensive (I tried hard to do something about it, and failed). But many readers should be able to download it, or individual chapters, for free through their institutions.
It was a privilege for me to take this project to completion and work with such extraordinary authors who produced such a collection of gems.
Eiffel Software
Home page at ETH
Informatics Europe
LASER summer school
Propulsion Academy
I read the foreword and preface available as a sample on Amazon’s page. This sounds of great interest but as you pointed out is expensive. Is there a sample chapter or two available anywhere? Thanks for all you do.
John
I am preparing a book page. My own chapter is available on arXiv (preprint version with a few typos that I have to correct): https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.16597.