Eliminating the Chaff—Again Banquet Speech at Marktoberdorf 1996

Abstract

I was asked to speak at this banquet at a rather late date. In order to make preparation easy, I did what any self-respecting software engineer does: reuse an already-produced component—with changes to fit the new context. At Marktoberdorf 1978, the formal development of algorithms was a hot topic, discussed with religious fervor by those for and against. Yesterday, traces of that fervor cropped up in the discussion of operational reasoning versus formal proof development. At Marktoberdorf 1978, I delivered a sermon on the new religion of formal algorithm development, called “Eliminating the Chaff”. This sermon is the component that I will reuse. “Chaff”, by the way, is what you get when you thresh wheat to get the kernels—the chaff is the garbage that is thrown away.