Bertrand Meyer's technology+ blog
Software engineering, programming methodology, languages, verification, general technology, publication culture, and 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
Earlier this year I was in Sofia for a conference, at the main university (Saint Kliment) which in the entrance hall had an exhibition about its history. There was this student poster and song from I think around 1900: I like the banner (what do you think?). It even has the correct Latin noun … Read more
Imagine having had coffee, over the years, with each of Euclid, Galileo, Descartes, Marie Curie, Newton, Einstein, Lise Leitner, Planck and de Broglie. For a computer scientist, if we set aside the founding generation (the Turings and von Neumanns), the equivalent is possible. I have had the privilege of meeting and in some cases closely … Read more
An article published here a few years ago, reproducing a note I wrote much earlier (1992), pointed out that conventional wisdom about the history of software engineering, cited in every textbook, is inaccurate: the term “software engineering” was in use before the famous 1968 Garmisch-Partenkichen conference. See that article for details. Recently a colleague wanted … Read more
(Revised from an article originally published in the CACM blog. Part 2 of a two-part article.) Part 1 of this article (to be found here, please read it first) made fun of authors who claim that software engineering is a total failure — and, like everyone else, benefit from powerful software at every step … Read more
On April 11 I gave the “Ershov lecture” in Novosibirsk. I talked about concurrency; a video recording is available here. The lecture is given annually in memory of Andrey P. Ershov, one of the founding fathers of Russian computer science and originator of many important concepts such as partial evaluation. According to Wikipedia, Knuth … Read more
A few years back my mother started writing her memoirs. She only completed a few chapters, hand-written, and I offered to type them up. There was not enough material to approach a publisher (my fault, for not pushing her to write more); the text has remained unpublished. I am making it available now: see … Read more