In 1985, computer scientist Peter Naur wrote a prescient essay called “Programming as Theory Building” that feels more relevant today than ever. As we watch junior developers reflexively accept LLM-generated code they don’t understand, and see codebases balloon with theoretically orphaned implementations, Naur’s central thesis becomes crystal clear: a program is not its source code. The Theory Behind the Code Link to heading Naur argues that programming is fundamentally about building...
