Peter Naur Was Right in 1985, and AI Just Proved It
In 1985, the Danish computer scientist Peter Naur published a short paper called "Programming as Theory Building." His argument was simple and radical: a program is not its source code. A program is a theory — a coherent mental model of what the system does, how its parts relate to each other, and why it was built the way it was. The source code is a byproduct of that theory. A trace. Not the thing itself.