4 ms·

Apparently, Peter Naur (the N in BNF) wrote this up nicely back in 1985 in "Programming as Theory Building": http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf http://pag

• sword_smith 7y ago
  I only have one year of formal CS education but that paper is one of my favorites on the topic. Naur is also the founder of CS at the University of Copenhagen, the place where I studied :)
• mcnichol 7y ago
  You should consider making this it's own article. "...the designers job is not to pass along "the design" but to pass along "the theories" driving the design. Knowledge of the theory is tacit in owning..." Well said. Thank you!
  • fsloth 7y ago
    I would prefer people read the original paper than any second-hand explanation of it. The paper is very readabale and understandable, and is probably relevant as long as into the future as human beings write code.
    • majewsky 7y ago
      When mcnichol said "make this its own article", they probably meant to submit the link to HN as its own submission, not to blog about it.
      • mcnichol 7y ago
        Yeah, that's what was meant. Totally agreed with the statement above this one, it reads well.
• fsloth 7y ago
  I was about to suggest the same thing. This paper should be mandatory reading for anyone that is professionally involved in a software development project.