What is the purpose of a computer program?

Your colleagues and you all write software.  You generate software prose on a daily basis, crafting these artifacts called programs, line by line.  You utilize a common language that you all agree upon, a language which bears scant resemblance to a spoken language.  So what is it that you are creating?  What is the purpose of these lines of code?

You might say a program elaborates how a computer is to execute an algorithm.  It describes what the system should do and how to do it.  As programmers, we are the narrators and the computer is our audience.  That’s basically what we were taught in our very first computer class.

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Category: Design, Guest Blog: Kayser, Programming | 5 Comments »

Bill holds a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University. He has more than 20 years of experience with object technology and languages including C++, Smalltalk and Java (he’s a certified Java programmer and architect). He has served as a member of Sun JCP expert groups on RMI Custom Remote References (JSR78) and EJB Performance Benchmarking (JSR131). His career spans IBM, Schlumberger (on oilfield applications), WorldStreet Corporation (on financial applications, as Chief Architect) and SupplyChainge (again as Chief Architect) At SupplyChainge, Bill interacted with Nagarro and visited Delhi as well. After SupplyChainge, Bill joined the very successful application performance management company Wily Technology, which was acquired by Computer Associates in early 2006 for a large sum. He currently works on the Wily Introscope™ product. He is also the co-founder of StepZero, LLC, a performance management consulting firm. He collaborates informally with many open source gurus including Ward Cunningham, the father of the Wiki.

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