Thinking for Programmers
Leslie Lamport had a great talk at Microsoft Build 2014:
Everyone thinks they think. If you don’t write down your thoughts, you’re fooling yourself.
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No programming language, no methodology, obviates the need for specification. A specification is a separate task from coding.
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If you don’t start with a spec, every piece of code you write is a patch.
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Thinking doesn’t guarantee that you won’t make mistakes. Not thinking guarantees that you will.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t get into an example of what you can do, e.g. model checking, with a TLA+ specification.
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[…] “coder” means today. They just use it as a shorter word for “programmer.” Leslie Lamport seems to see coding as translating a (perhaps implicit) specification into code. We understand that […]
