Software engineering, programming methodology, languages, verification, general technology, publication culture, and more
After several months of inaction I have updated my “Gallery of Computer Scientists” [1]. It benefits from many recent meetings where the density per square meter of Turing award winners and other brilliant computer scientists was hard to beat, most notably the two extraordinary Turing centenary celebrations — the ACM event in San Francisco, and … 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was not enough material to approach a publisher (my fault, for not pushing her to write more); the text has remained unpublished.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
As the name indicates, this blog is particularly devoted to technology, and even more particularly to software technology. My technical persona is not, however, completely cut off from my personal persona and I increasingly include non-software topics. Whether there is any readership equally interested in learning about using domain theory for specification and finding out … Read more
In the circus business, the Zavatta family is a legend. From father to son and grandson, a Zavatta has for decades been the foremost clown of his generation, first in Italy, then in French North Africa, then in France proper. None was ever more famous than Achille Zavatta, who carried the family name through the … Read more
Word Umlottery [ˈʊm.lɑːɾɚɹi] (fr. umloterie, f; ger. Umlotterie, f.; it. umlotteria, f.; rus. умлотерия , f.). Definition A spur-of-the-moment and generally random decision, by a hesitant speaker of German talking in front of a (typically large) native-speaker audience, to pronounce the next intended word with, or without, an umlaut on the decisive syllable. Example use … Read more
A couple of weeks ago I proposed a small quiz. (I also stated that the answer would come “on Wednesday” — please understand any such promise as “whenever I find the time”. Sorry.) Here is the answer. The quiz was: I have a function: For 0 it yields 0. For 1 it yields 1. For … Read more
Alexander Kogtenkov pointed out to me that precursor work to my papers on the Alias Calculus [1] [2] had been published by John Whaley and Martin Rinard [3]. There are some significant differences; in particular my rules are simpler, and their work is not explicitly presented as a calculus. But many of the basic ideas … Read more
For various reasons there have been no articles in recent weeks; now we are restarting on a regular basis! A the first topic for this new season, here is a little quiz. I have a function: For 0 it yields 0. For 1 it yields 1. For 2 it yields 4. For 3 it yields … Read more