Short version: the full text of my Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages book (second printing, 1991) is now available. This page has more details including the table of chapters, and a link to the PDF (3.3MB, 448 + xvi pages). The book is a survey of methods for la … | Continue reading
A full online version of Object-Oriented Software Construction, 2nd edition (1997) The second edition of Object-Oriented Software Construction was published in 1997, considerably augmented from the 1988 first edition. For more about the book, see the Wikipedia entry about it. B … | Continue reading
Science progresses through people taking advantage of others’ insights and inventions. One of the conditions that makes the game possible is that you acknowledge what you take. For the originator, it is rewarding to see one’s ideas reused, but frustrating when that happens withou … | Continue reading
Sign seen in a Singapore shopping center: Let us make sure we understand: here children are not allowed, but playing is. As a consequence such playing must be performed by non-children only. Adults welcome to play! Maybe it is actually not the intended meaning. Instead of (and … | Continue reading
Some of the folk wisdom going around in software engineering, often cluessly repeated for decades, is just wrong. It can be particularly damaging when it affects key aspects of software development and is contradicted by solid scientific evidence. The present discussion covers a … | Continue reading
Over breakfast at your hotel you read an article berating banks about the fraudulent credit card transactions they let through. You proceed to check out and bang! Your credit card is rejected because (as you find out later) the bank thought [1] it couldn’t possibly be you in that … | Continue reading
(Originally published on CACM blog.) Most of the world programs in a very strange way. Strange to me. I usually hear the reverse question: people ask us, the Eiffel community, to explain why we program our way. I hardly understand the question, because the only mystery is how any … | Continue reading
Bertrand Meyer: Making Sense of Agile Methods, in IEEE Software, vol. 35, no. 2, March 2018, pages 91-94. IEEE article page here (may require membership or purchase). Draft available here. An assessment of agile methods, based on my book Agile! The Good, the Hype and the Ugly. It … | Continue reading