Bertrand Meyer

See http://bertrandmeyer.com/about

Some contributions

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Science progresses through people taking advantage of others’ insights and inventions. One of the conditions that makes the game possible is that you acknowledge what you take. For the originator, it is rewarding to see one’s ideas reused, but frustrating when that happens without acknowledgment, especially when you are yourself punctilious about citing your own … Read more




Le français dans le monde

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Extrait d’un article dans Le Monde d’hier, signé Juliette Bénézit (sur un problème sérieux : l’inadéquation des services en ligne pour les cartes de séjour pour étrangers) : il s’agit d’une problématique particulièrement prégnante en Ile-de-France Diable ! Quels termes galants pour dire que le problème est particulièrement aigu dans cette belle région ! En … Read more




Time to resurrect PSP?

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Let us assume for the sake of the argument that software quality matters. There are many ingredients to software quality, of which one must be the care that every programmer devotes to the job. The Personal Software Process, developed by Watts Humphrey in the 1990s [1], prescribes a discipline that software developers should apply to … Read more




Between you and me

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I have been conducting interesting conversations with a two-something child who has not quite mastered the speaker-dependent [1] personal pronouns. He says things like “Where is your mom?”, when he actually means to ask about his mother, not mine; from hearing people tell him things like “your mom is coming”, he is clearly taking “your … Read more




The extremely bizarre idea of an inauguration

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Could someone please explain what there is to celebrate when a candidate is elected to a political function? The grotesque ideas of a victory rally or an inauguration ceremony defy common sense. An election success is an opportunity to start doing something good. It is not an achievement; it is the promise of possible achievements … Read more




The right forms of expression

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If you want to know whether your_string has at least one upper-case character, you will write this in Eiffel: if  ∃ c: your_string ¦ c.is_upper then … Such predicate-calculus boolean expressions, using a quantifier ∀ (“for all”) or ∃ (“there exists”) are becoming common in Eiffel code. They are particularly useful in Design by Contract … Read more




Questionnaire on deployed, formally verified systems

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A group of us is preparing a survey on systems that have been both formally verified and deployed for actual use. To make sure we do not forget any important development, we have devised a questionnaire. If you have experience with such a system, please help by filling the questionnaire. It only includes a few … Read more




New video lecture: distances, invariants and recursion

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I have started a new series of video lectures, which I call “Meyer’s Object-Oriented Classes” (MOOC). The goal is to share insights I have gained over the years on various aspects of programming and software engineering. Many presentations are focused on one area, such as coding, design, analysis, theoretical computer science (even there you find … Read more




Fan mail

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Received this today from a heretofore unknown correspondent (I don’t often check Facebook Messenger but just happened to). Name removed (I am not sure he would want me to identify him), text translated from another language into English. Hello, thanks for your book “Object-Oriented Software Construction” [read in a translation]. I read it after a … Read more