Summary
I was writing code in front of a colleague of mine yesterday and he noted that my style was a form of intentional programming.

My approach to writing code is to write a program as if there existed a super library which could already perform virtually any task I needed done. This way I simply write my algorithms in a very direct and straightforward manner with little planning or thinking. I then use the compiler to note what functions need to be filled in, which I do using the same technique, and so on recursively. The result of this technique is code which maps closely to what I am trying to achieve -- what my intention is -- and as a result is easy to read and manage.

Intentional programming is similar in that it is related the idea of expressing a programmer's intent in the source code. However intentional programming usually seems to imply the usage of another less formal language, though I don't believe it is neccessary. Here are some links to Intentional Programming on the web:

• http://wesnerm.blogs.com/net_undocumented/2004/06/intentional_pro.html
• http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.aspx?msr_tr_id=MSR-TR-95-52
• http://intentsoft.com/

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About the Blogger

Christopher Diggins is a software developer and freelance writer. Christopher loves programming, but is eternally frustrated by the shortcomings of modern programming languages. As would any reasonable person in his shoes, he decided to quit his day job to write his own ( www.heron-language.com ). Christopher is the co-author of the C++ Cookbook from O'Reilly. Christopher can be reached through his home page at www.cdiggins.com.