Somehow or other the mathematical nature of the challenge seems to have been ignored here as politically unpalatable. The European tend to maintain a greater distinction between man and machine and have lower expectation of both. You can't teach beginning programmers top-down design because they don't know which way is up. I'm skeptical of neural networks because people are writing the programs and designing the networks that are designing the programs. I wish we knew more about how we think.
Computer programming is an art form, like the creation of poetry or music.
Leslie Lamport A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable. When I look back on my work, most of it seems like dumb luck - I happened to be looking at the right problem, at the right time, having the right background. It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa. Pablo Picasso Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.