What is recorded here?
Wirth describes program construction as explicit, revisable design decisions that refine tasks and their data representations together, demonstrated through an eight-queens solver and its extension. High-level steps become implementable instructions while representation choices are delayed until needed. Auxiliary state and recursive alternatives expose tradeoffs; the same components are then reused to enumerate solutions rather than find only one.
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Scientific scope
This is a worked design/teaching methodology, not a universal formal refinement theorem, first invention of backtracking or measured guarantee of software productivity. Original timings and solution counts are author-reported and unreplayed. Pascal, Hoare/Dijkstra correctness work and later refinement calculi retain separate credit.
Read the original work
- Niklaus Wirth, Program Development by Stepwise Refinement, Communications of the ACM14(4),221–227 (1971), DOI10.1145/362575.362577
- ETH Zurich Research Collection: Program development by step-wise refinement (1971 report)
This English explanation is an editorial reading view. It does not replace the complete original work or certify its science.
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People and systems
Niklaus Wirth
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English catalogue narrative
Wirth: program development through stepwise refinement
Wirth describes program construction as explicit, revisable design decisions that refine tasks and their data representations together, demonstrated through an eight-queens solver and its extension.
High-level steps become implementable instructions while representation choices are delayed until needed. Auxiliary state and recursive alternatives expose tradeoffs; the same components are then reused to enumerate solutions rather than find only one.
Scientific scope
This is a worked design/teaching methodology, not a universal formal refinement theorem, first invention of backtracking or measured guarantee of software productivity. Original timings and solution counts are author-reported and unreplayed. Pascal, Hoare/Dijkstra correctness work and later refinement calculi retain separate credit.
People and systems
Niklaus Wirth