Programming as Theory Building

Probably the most profound essay on what programming actually is. Naur argues that a program is not the code but the theory in the programmers' heads — the understanding of how the code maps to the real-world problem. When the original programmers leave, the theory dies even if the code survives. This explains why rewrites are so costly, why documentation never suffices, and why Conway's law is not a joke but a theorem. For anyone managing a codebase or a team, Naur makes visible the invisible asset that determines whether software can evolve or only decay.