There Should Be No Such Thing As

How Do We Convince People That In Programming Simplicity And Clarity - In Short: What Mathematicians Call Elegance - Are Not A Dispensable Luxury, But A Crucial Matter That Decides Between Success And Failure?

Pl/1, The Fatal Disease, Belongs More To The Problem Set Than To The Solution Set.

Yes, I Share Your Concern: How To Program Well -though A Teachable Topic- Is Hardly Taught. The Situation Is Similar To That In Mathematics, Where The Explicit Curriculum Is Confined To Mathematical Results; How To Do Mathematics Is Something The Student Must Absorb By Osmosis, So To Speak. One Reason For Preferring Symbol-manipulating, Calculating Arguments Is That Their Design Is Much Better Teachable Than The Design Of Verbal/pictorial Arguments. Large-scale Introduction Of Courses On Such Calculational Methodology, However, Would Encounter Unsurmoutable Political Problems.

[though Computer Science Is A Fairly New Discipline, It Is Predominantly Based On The Cartesian World View. As Edsgar W. Dijkstra Has Pointed Out] A Scientific Discipline Emerges With The - Usually Rather Slow! - Discovery Of Which Aspects Can Be Meaningfully 'studied' In Isolation For The Sake Of Their Own Consistency.

Progress Is Possible Only If We Train Ourselves To Think About Programs Without Thinking Of Them As Pieces Of Executable Code.