# Computer Science Off Course — Peter Naur: Programming as Theory Building

# Peter Naur — Programming as Theory Building

Computer Science Off Course, Season 1 Episode 1. Hosts: Felienne Hermans and
Hanna Schraffenberger. Published 2026-07-07, running time 40:54.

## Episode notes (verbatim from rss.com show page)

What is programming? This week, we take a stab at this fundamental question with
Peter Naur's paper "Programming as Theory Building". Felienne has read the paper
(more than once), and Hanna is asking her questions about it. Apparently,
programming is more than just solving problems by writing code and involves
theory building! Listen in to hear more about what this theory building entails
(spoiler alert: it has something to do with being able to explain and defend the
solutions we come up with), some beautiful quotes from the paper, and Felienne's
ideas of what Naur's argument means for current AI practices, LLM usage, and the
computer science curriculum. Read the paper, do the homework, or skip the
homework and listen to Hanna's homework attempt instead.

Keywords: Computer Science, Education, University, Interdisciplinary, Books,
Articles, Homework, Perspectives.

The "Links" section of the show notes was truncated behind a "Read more" control
and could not be retrieved.

## Lobsters discussion

Submitted to Lobsters at https://lobste.rs/s/oqwjp5/computer_science_off_course_programming
The comment thread could not be fetched during ingest — lobste.rs timed out on
every request from the ingest environment (connection refused/timeout, HTTP 000).
Left as a pointer for manual backup.

## Ingest note

The episode is a discussion-format restatement of Peter Naur's 1985 essay, framed
for a computer-science-education audience, with the hosts extending it to current
AI/LLM practice and the CS curriculum. The operational gloss offered — theory
building is being able to explain and defend the solution — matches Naur's own
account already captured in the wiki. No new claim, quote, or framing beyond what
[[programming-as-theory-building]] and [[programming-as-theory-building-codeutopia]]
already cover was recoverable from the available material, so no new wiki page was
created. Kept as a source record and a cross-reference pointer.