It used to be the program's purpose to instruct our computers; it became the computer's purpose to execute our programs.

I don't need to waste my time with a computer just because I am a computer scientist.

The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim.

Yes, I share your concern: how to program well -though a teachable topic- is hardly taught. The situation is similar to that in mathematics, where the explicit curriculum is confined to mathematical results; how to do mathematics is something the student must absorb by osmosis, so to speak. One reason for preferring symbol-manipulating, calculating arguments is that their design is much better teachable than the design of verbal/pictorial arguments. Large-scale introduction of courses on such calculational methodology, however, would encounter unsurmoutable political problems.

The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.

It used to be the program's purpose to instruct our computers; it became the computer's purpose to execute our programs.

If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.