“What is the central core of the subject [computer science]? What is it that distinguishes it from the separate subjects with which it is related? What is the linking thread which gathers these disparate branches into a single discipline? My answer to these questions is simple—it is the art of programming a computer.”
Tony Hoare
Computer Science (Primary source)
Tony Hoare’s 1971 inaugural lecture at Queen’s University Belfast where he aims to explain the nature and significance of computer science to a general audience by focusing on the central activity of the discipline: computer programming.
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“Having surveyed the relationships of computer science with other disciplines, it remains to answer the basic questions: What is the central core of the subject? What is it that distinguishes it from the separate subjects with which it is related? What is the linking thread which gathers these disparate branches into a single discipline? My answer to these questions is simple—it is the art of programming a computer. It is the art of designing efficient and elegant methods of getting a computer to solve problems, theoretical or practical, small or large, simple or complex. It is the art of translating this design into an effective and accurate computer program. This is the art that must be mastered by a practising computer scientist; the skill that is sought by numerous advertisements in the general and technical press; the ability that must be fostered and developed by computer science courses in universities.”
Tony Hoare
“There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.”
— Tony Hoare Primary source“The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity.”
— Tony Hoare Primary source“I realised that both verification and testing were using the same technology—assertions—on a common goal of improving software products in their speed of delivery, their quality, and their reliability.”
— Tony Hoare Primary source“Above all, I did not allow anything to be done which I did not myself understand. It worked!”
— Tony Hoare Primary source“My aim was to design [door] handles that were as simple as possible. Our living environment today is complex and polymorphic enough. I have always striven to couteract this chaos.”
— Dieter Rams Primary source“I wrote my first program for a computer when I was thirteen years old.”
— Bill Gates Primary source“Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.”
— Tony Hoare Secondary source“The real value of tests is not that they detect bugs in the code, but that they detect inadequacies in the methods, concentration, and skills of those who design and produce the code.”
— Tony Hoare Primary sourceComputer Science Computer Programming