Naur on Code as a Shared Mental Model, Google AI explains

In his seminal 1985 essay, Programming as Theory Building, computer scientist Peter Naur fundamentally redefines software development as a deeply human activity. He argues that the primary product of programming is not the tangible source code, documentation, or specifications, but rather a shared mental model—a “theory”—constructed within the minds of the engineering team. Drawing on philosopher Gilbert Ryle’s concept of mind, Naur stresses that successful software relies on an active, intuitive “knowing how” rather than a rigid list of rules. Code and design specs are inherently lossy media; they merely capture what a program does, completely failing to communicate the “why” behind historical constraints, structural exclusions, and architectural trade-offs.

Consequently, Naur views a software system as “alive” only as long as its original engineering team actively possesses and maintains this underlying theory. When the group of programmers who understand this philosophy completely disperses or leaves the project, the program is effectively considered “dead”. Subsequent developers can execute the software and even mechanically modify it, but they are forced to treat it like a mysterious black box. Lacking the original theory, their subsequent modifications manifest as disjointed patchwork fixes that introduce unexpected side effects and ultimately accelerate overall architectural rot. In Naur’s view, reconstructing this lost theory purely from source code text is so difficult that scrapping the codebase and rewriting it entirely from scratch is frequently the cheaper, cleaner option.

This perspective has gained profound significance in the modern era of generative AI and Large Language Model (LLM) coding assistants. While AI tools can effortlessly churn out complex, syntactically perfect code, they inherently lack any structural intent or broad cross-module architectural awareness. When engineers reflexively accept these AI-generated blocks without integrating them into an evolving mental model, projects quickly fill up with theoretically orphaned codebases. Naur’s work reminds the modern software industry that writing text is no longer the primary bottleneck of software engineering. Instead, the true value and survival of software reside entirely in the human developer’s ability to maintain, communicate, and expand the underlying theoretical framework.

Footnotes
  1. Reddit: Programming as Theory Building, Naur (1985) Discussion
  2. Ratfactor: Dave’s Paper Notes on Naur’s Theory Building
  3. Ingenieria de Software I: Programming as Theory Building (Full PDF text)
  4. Embedded Artistry: Field Atlas Breakdown of Naur’s Theory
  5. Hacker News: Discussion on Naur’s Essay in the Era of Autonomous Agents
  6. LinkedIn: Wesley Reisz on the Modern Relevance of Naur’s 1985 Essay
  7. Polvara: Reevaluating Naur’s Essay in the Generative AI Era
  8. Cekrem: Senior Developers as Guardians of Software Quality

 

The Rest is History – NYTIMES article on

Part of the delight of the podcast is in their mischievous, but fundamentally good-natured observations about life — its absurdities, contradictions and continuities. For Mr. Holland, the show is popular because it reveals the strange ways of our predecessors while illuminating the common threads that bind us.

“Without having consciously set out to do this,” he said, “I think it is a celebration of the inherent fascination of the past, as the best way to understand how infinite the ways are of being human.”

How ‘The Rest Is History’ Podcast Conquered the World
When two British historians, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, began the show, neither anticipated it would become the top history podcast in the English-speaking world.

American Music – Violent Femmes

Why Do Birds Sing? is the fifth studio album by Violent Femmes, released on April 30, 1991. It was the band’s last album with original drummer Victor DeLorenzo, who left two years later to devote his time to acting, and was produced by Michael Beinhorn, best-known then for his work with Red Hot Chili Peppers on Mother’s Milk and The Uplift Mofo Party Plan.

The album featured the single “American Music,” which rose to number 2 on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart during the week of May 18, 1991, and became a staple of the band’s live shows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Do_Birds_Sing%3F

Old Days of Internet – Some Remembrances

People who used the internet before 1999, what do you remember?
by
u/Revolutionary_Data86 in
AskReddit

ferminriii
Everything was new. Whatever new website you found, it was the first time you looked at it. There was no YouTube so people were just launching websites to be funny and post jokes and tell stories. You learned about things from your friends. I remember I was on some kind of email list that got emailed picture of the day. It ended up becoming a lot of what was recycled on FARK.com

Richard_Sauce
This is important thing. Like, yeah, dial tones and AOL, lol.

But the important thing was the expansiveness, the sense of discovery, the DIY/self-made nature of everything. Finding and building communities. The internet used to be made and controlled by people before it became a main street of corporately own websites. Nothing but digital chain restaurants now.

And lest you think I’m some rose tinted/everything was better back in the day type…..lots of things were worse then. Discovery was way harder, took effort. You might find a community, forum, site, whatever, only for it to die immediately. The internet was harder to navigate, harder to maintain, less stable, and oh yeah, no streaming video.

Still miss it. If I could hit a button to revert to back then, I would. Even with the trade offs.

Clear_Economics7010
No barriers to entry. Some wacko in a basement would have a website that looked more professional than a university. You would end up reading something only to realize halfway through it was the manifesto of a insane person not an actual PhD.

starkeffect
Having to learn HTML since there was no website-creation software yet.

FoodLionMVP
My friend and I went to a Better Than Ezra concert, and we loved their opening band so much we made an entire Geocities fan page for them. The band actually SIGNED OUR GUESTBOOK! We were maybe 14 years old? We were the coolest.

SnottyMonkey
What was rhe band? I was randomly listening to Better Than Ezra when I read this comment, true story.

FoodLionMVP
The band was called “Convoy.” They had an album called “Black Licorice” that was released around the turn of the century. I don’t know if they were ever heard from again but we definitely had that CD.

No-Author-2358
I first got online in 1993. There was no web browser – it was just typing on a green or amber screen monitor.

The Internet was like DOS. Except you could chat and interact with people all over the planet. Text only.

Epistemic Asymmetry and Traveling to Unfamiliar Cities – ChatGPT on

What you’re describing isn’t just novelty—it’s epistemic asymmetry. Everyone around you knows what’s going on, and you don’t. You’re the only person in the café who doesn’t know why that group is celebrating, why there’s a line outside the theater, or why that particular neighborhood seems to come alive at dusk. The city is full of meanings that are visible but inaccessible. That asymmetry creates a kind of gentle tension, and I think our minds naturally find it compelling.

It also reminds me of a distinction made by John Dewey in Art as Experience. Dewey argues that we don’t merely perceive objects; we perceive situations—ongoing patterns of activity. In a new city, you perceive countless situations whose beginnings and endings you don’t know. You catch life in medias res. It’s a little like walking into the second act of a play: you understand enough to know something meaningful is happening, but not enough to explain it. That incompleteness invites attention rather than closing it down.

Happy Birthday Colorado – 150 Years Old

Colorado Day is celebrated annually on August 1st and marks the official 150th anniversary of Colorado’s statehood in 2026 (the historic sesquicentennial), featuring major statewide celebrations at the Colorado State Capitol, Denver Union Station, and History

via google


Here are a few pics in honor of Colorado day

Boulder Flatirons seen from Chautauqua Park

Washington Park, Denver

St Mary’s Lake

Crystal River, on hike to Crystal Mill

Colorado River, from rest area near Glenwood Springs. 

Walker Ranch Loop trail

Edgar Wright on Monkee’s Movie

https://www.criterion.com/current/top-10-lists/161-edgar-wright-s-top-10

Bob Rafelson
Head
Head is my favorite film that stars a musical artist, by some degree. And yes, that includes the brilliant A Hard Day’s Night. However, the Monkees’ triumph of a movie is a Pyrrhic victory, because Head accelerated their demise, as it sees Dolenz, Nesmith, Tork, and Jones push the self-destruct button. Directed by Bob Rafelson and cowritten by Jack Nicholson, the movie shows the Monkees tearing down their wholesome network-TV, pre–Fab Four image with wild style. Much has been read into this stream-of-consciousness movie, with its overlapping dream sequences, surreal song numbers, and drug-influenced chaos. The simplest way of describing it is this: the Monkees are sick of being on their network show and attempt to break out of the studio lot, literally and figuratively. There are several scenes where the Monkees are trapped in a box, a live number where they are revealed to be plastic mannequins, and bookending sequences where the members commit suicide.

So basically, the Monkees want out.

There have been some claims by the Monkees since the film came out that this message was projected onto it by Rafelson and Nicholson, but the script was clearly born of a very real frustration with their image. The movie bombed in 1968, because not many Monkees fans wanted to know that their idols had painted-on smiles. What remains is a gem of rock music cinema, with great songs and images throughout. Plus, as depressing as the theme of entrapment is, it’s frequently very funny.

I got to interview Dolenz about it at a New Beverly Q&A once. A young audience member quizzed him on the deeper themes, and he just replied, “Man, I was twenty-three . . .”

Drama and the Idealization of Life, Eric Bentley quote

And this constitutes a supreme idealization of life, for it signifies a life which has a clear and unitary meaning, a direction, an utterly purposive movement toward an end. In this respect, dramatic art is one of the great wish-fulfilling fulfilling dreams, for there is nothing human beings more ardently crave than to be persons in such a drama. In the Middle Ages, it was official doctrine that humanity did belong in such a drama; and so the art of the drama represented a metaphysical fact. But this art has as great a poignancy – or greater – in an age like our own when the universe is generally felt to be unintelligible, amorphous, undramatic. For today art offers the only integrated drama, and we can be persons in a perfectly constructed Action only, it would seem, when we read or see a play.

The Life of the Drama
Eric Bentley