Defensive Programming

Abstract

By June 1949 people had begun to realize that it was not so easy to get a program right as had one time appeared. I well remember when I was trying to get working my first non-trivial program [in assembler code or perhaps machine language]. The realization came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs. Turing had evidently realized this too, for he spoke at the conference on ``checking a large routine.''—Maurice Wilkes (Turing Award winner, 1967), Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer (MIT, 1985), page 145.