Coding ≠ Programming: A Turing Award Winner's Perspective on Abstraction

Leslie Lamport, an 84-year-old Turing Award winner, delivered a keynote speech emphasizing the crucial difference between coding and programming. He argued that abstract thinking before coding is paramount, leading to fewer errors and more efficient code. His own TLA+ specification language, used in the Rosetta spacecraft's development, serves as a prime example, demonstrating significant code reduction and architectural improvements. Lamport criticizes programmers' tendency to focus on languages instead of abstract design, advocating for designing the program's abstract model first, then coding. This approach minimizes debugging and revision, resulting in cleaner, more maintainable code.