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Abstract

The creative activity of programming—to be distinguished from coding—is usually taught by examples serving to exhibit certain techniques. It is here considered as a sequence of design decisions concerning the decomposition of tasks into subtasks and of data into data structures. The process of successive refinement of specifications is illustrated by a short but nontrivial example, from which a number of conclusions are drawn regarding the art and the instruction of programming.

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© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Wirth, N. (2001). Program Development by Stepwise Refinement. In: Broy, M., Denert, E. (eds) Pioneers and Their Contributions to Software Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-48354-7_23

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-48354-7_23

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-42290-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-48354-7

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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