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This blog does pretty good job summarizing Naur's points. (My only quibble is equating mental models with theory in Naur's sense, but its an okay approximation). I definitely recommend people read the original paper. It's a flawed but beautiful paper.

Shameless self plug:

We just did an episode on Naur's Programming as Theory Building in the most recent episode of the Future of Coding Podcast.

https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/061

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I was going to post this! I really enjoyed this episode (and also, all the other episodes of your podcast).

Can you elaborate on why you think the paper is flawed please?

I think all papers are flawed in their own way. So it is not meant as a slight. It is actually my favorite programming related paper. That said:

I think Naur was just a bit to vague and assumed background knowledge of Gilbert Ryle where most people don't have any. I think a lot of people finish reading the paper and don't realize what Naur's notion of theory is or how his radical conclusions follow.

I don’t know Gilbert Ryle but I believe I understand the paper as intended.

What do they realize then instead?

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