Some Meditations on Advanced Programming

inclined, nor entitled to do so. My title already indicates that I am going to meditate on the subject, which is something quite different from giving a survey. Perhaps the title of my paper would have been more outspoken if it had been “My meditations on Advanced Program­ ming” for I intend to present a picture in the way I wish to see it; and I should like to do so in all honesty without any claim to objectivity. I intend to do so because I have a feeling that I serve you better by giving you an honest personal conviction than by presenting you with the colourless average of conflicting current opinions of other people. You will observe that I fail to give you a generally acceptable definition of the subject “Advanced Programming”. I think that in my own appreciation of the sub­ ject the description “Advancing Programming” would have been a better qualifi­ cation. I like many activities which are worthy, I think, of the name “Advanced Programming” but I do not like these activities so much for the sake of their out­ put, the programs that have resulted from them, as for what these activities can teach us. If I am willing to study them, to meditate upon them, I am willing to do