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Implications of the View of Programs as Formal Systems

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Metainformatics (MIS 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2641))

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Abstract

The prevailing view of software development as the production of program systems is abandoned in favor of software development as theory building. This suggests that software development properly should be regarded as a deductive activity following the same methodology as is used in all deductive sciences. Programming is merely the description process in the activity of building theories about things in reality. Being the vehicle of theory building, programming may further be considered from a linguistic view. Programs are written in a language and have a proposed meaning; semantics. The main idea is that description and interpretation are complementary in a language; they cannot be fragmented within a language. Seeing programs as linguistic objects in this way has a profound influence on most aspects of software development.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Campus Helsingborg, Lund University, P.O. Box 882, SE-251 08, Helsingborg

    Bertil Ekdahl

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  1. Bertil Ekdahl
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University Esbjerg, Niels Bohrs Vej 8, 6700, Esbjerg, Denmark

    Peter J. Nürnberg

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Ekdahl, B. (2003). Implications of the View of Programs as Formal Systems. In: Nürnberg, P.J. (eds) Metainformatics. MIS 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2641. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44872-1_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44872-1_11

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-40218-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-44872-3

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