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Why Should We Learn the Foundations of Computer Programming with no Help of Automated Tools or Automation Software?

Why Should We Learn the Foundations of  Computer  Programming with no Help of  Automated Tools or Automation Software? Jeferson L. R. Souza, Ph.D. thejefecomp@neartword.com 18 September, 2026 Dear readers, welcome to another post! This one is special, as it short yet discussing the challenging task of learning the foundations of computer programming with no help of automated tools or automation software. With advances in software engineering, and with the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accelerate the development processes, almost everything gets automated by a tool. All the details related to compiling, linking, running, testing, packaging, and deploying a program developed in a given programming language get masked by either the pressing of a button in an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) such as Eclipse [1], or the execution of an automated command such as “mvn compile" on Maven [2], or even by a prompt we can provide, e.g., to Claude [3] as foll...
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Recursion: Leave it or Deal with the Negative Consequences

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   Recursion: Leave it or Deal with the  Negative Consequences Jeferson L. R. Souza thejefecomp@neartword.com December 31, 2023 Abstract The moment we acquire knowledge of computer programming—mainly at a professional level—recursion is a technique we definitely avoid to use while either designing or implementing solutions for real-world problems. Although recursion has a great link with Math and a tight relation with heuristics related to Artificial Intelligence (AI), helping defining and understanding a problem in an easy way, the negative consequences of its use may become a nightmare during the execution of an algorithm written with any programming language. In order to avoid the use of recursion, even if we rely on compiler-tools optimisations such as Tail Call Elimination, we should always design an iterative solution from scratch if performance is an intended goal. In this paper-like post, we discuss what recursion is, visiting its drawbacks to understand why we mu...
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The Way of the Force in Software Engineering: The Beginning

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   The Way of the Force in Software Engineering: The Beginning Jeferson L. R. Souza thejefecomp@neartword.com February 7, 2022 Abstract In this new project called “ The way of the Force in Software Engineering ” Jeferson Souza (thejefecomp), Founder, Writer, and all in between of the NeartWord project ( https://www.neartword.com ), and Independent Software Engineer Consultant at his personal company called NeartWord, starts a new quest of sharing knowledge related to his expertise and experience both in software development, and associated areas cross-cutting the Computer Science field. Collaboration instead of Competition was his main motivation to think about starting this project, which means declaring himself as an “Independent Software Engineering Consultant” an act of libera- tion from the standard way to see a person as a worker of a given project, instead of being a fundamental wheel moving it indepen- dently, and collaboratively. Posts would be written in a “paper-lik...
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