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If you haven't yet read it, go straight the source on this one and read Peter Naur's "Programming as Theory Building". The paper is excellent, and an easy read. It's linked to by TFA.

The consequences of the logic contained within Naur's essay are far stronger than I think the article understands them to be.

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It's not exactly an easy read -- whenever I recommend it to someone I also warn them that it contains the most passive sentence in the history of the English language: "Information obtained by a member of group A about the compiler resulting from the further modification of it after about 10 years made it clear that at that later stage the original powerful structure was still visible, but made entirely ineffective by amorphous additions of many different kinds."

But the content more than makes up for the style!

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