Bertrand Meyer's technology+ blog
Software engineering, programming methodology, languages, verification, general technology, publication culture, and more
A few years ago I was driving on a freeway in France and turned on the radio, chancing on France-Culture. (In passing it is fair to note the abundance of quality programs on that station. It has its share of empty Parisian intellectual chit-chat but much of the time I learn something interesting.) I was … Read more
The latest issue of the New York Review of Books contains a book review by George Stauffer about Alban Berg with this bewildering sentence about Berg’s childhood: He showed few signs of musical talent as a youth aside from informal piano lessons, reading through the scores of songs and operas, and playing four-hand arrangements of … Read more
To buy a Zurich Opera ticket online you have to register on their site, including choosing a form of address from a list which beats any I have seen: As a side detail, their system does not work: to enable registration and booking it is supposed to send you an email with your password, and … Read more
Every Mozart study states that his last Symphony, “Jupiter” (Köchel 551), is one of humankind’s greatest musical achievements. Every description of the symphony indicates that the first movement borrows a theme from a concert aria. Every one that I have read expresses surprise at this self-borrowing and states that the reason for it is a … Read more
The 2013 Informatics Europe “Best Practices in Education” award was devoted, this year, to initiatives for teaching informatics in schools [1]. It was given out last week at the European Computer Science Summit in Amsterdam [2]. Two teams shared it, one from Poland and the other from Romania. Both teams showed excellent projects, but the … Read more
I have always admired Daniel Barenboim, both as a pianist and as a conductor — and not just because years ago, from pictures on disk covers, we looked strikingly alike, see e.g. [1] which could almost be me at that time (Then I went to see him in concert and realized that he was … Read more