On Sun, 19 Aug 2001 alan.gauld@bt.com wrote:
One recurring theme in these "State of the Practice" papers was the lack of a fundamental theoretical basis for computing. i.e. there's nothing comparable to the laws of physics in software engineering.
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Since I am sure this isn't original, who has done this stuff before? - Where can I get papers or books on fundamental information representation/transformation theory? I assume there must be something? somewhere?
David Gries has written a book called "The Science of Programming" which states a framework for writing mathematicaly correct programs. I bought it after seeing Jon Bentley's recommendation in "Programming Pearls". As is typical with me, I haven't really gotten past Chapter One yet. *grin* Still, from what I can glean, Gries uses the power of logic and assertions to show how people can be confident in a program's correctness. There's also a chapter on "inverting" programs which looks like a lot of fun.