Bertrand Meyer's technology+ blog
Software engineering, programming methodology, languages, verification, general technology, publication culture, and more
There is a new paper out, several years in the making: The Role of Formalism in System Requirements Jean-Michel Bruel, Sophie Ebersold, Florian Galinier, Manuel Mazzara, Alexander Naumchev, Bertrand Meyer Computing Surveys (ACM), vol. 54, no. 5, June 2021, pages 1-36 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3448975 Preprint available here. The authors are from the Schaffhausen Institute of Technology … Read more
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
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
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
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
What can you do to or with an algorithm? In other words, what is a good verb to substitute for the hyphen in “— the algorithm”? You can learn an algorithm. Discovering classical algorithms is a large part of the Bildungsroman of a computer scientist. Sorting algorithms, graph algorithms, parsing algorithms, numerical algorithms, matrix algorithms, graphical … Read more
The Schaffhausen Institute of Technology (SIT) is holding a Webinar tomorrow with a set of three talks by: Serguei Beloussov, founder of Acronis and president of SIT; Michael Widenius, CTO of MariaDB and creator of MySQL Server; and Mauro Pezzè, my colleague at SIT, who will present the new master program that we have just … Read more
Another completely unexpected gem from the Viaje de Turquia (see the previous article on this blog): a 16-th century statement of the Dunning-Kruger effect! An effect, of course, which has never been more visible than today (just watch the news). Against Pedro, who narrates his travels and travails, the dialog sets two other characters, friends … Read more
At this gloomy moment it is good to find a gem in an unexpected place. I am reading (in translation) the Viaje de Turquia, or Turkish Voyage — literaly, Voyage of Turkey — a 16th-century epic dialog, whose authorship is disputed. It is a precious source of information on the period and rings throughout like a … Read more