Lecture by Leslie Lamport on Computer Science and Algorithms

Introduction

Leslie Lamport introduces himself as a computer scientist.
Reflects that the field of computer science wasn't recognized when he started his career.
Initially began working as a programmer and took time to realize his contributions were scientific.

Educated as a mathematician.
Approached computer science with a mathematician's mindset.
Belief: An algorithm needs a proof of correctness; without it, it's a conjecture, not a theorem.

Distinction Between Programming and Coding: Programming involves mental effort and design, whereas coding is similar to typing in writing.
- Writing involves conveying ideas; similarly, programming is about ideas and functionality.
Teaching Programming: Suggests focusing on the program's purpose and mathematical foundation rather than just coding.
- Criticism of current mathematical education, noting people's fear of mathematics, even among senior programmers.

Definition: Systems where one computer’s failure can affect another unknown computer.
Serendipitous interest when he received a paper on distributed databases.
Realized the algorithm violated the causality concept from special relativity.
Proposed state machine concept for solving distributed systems problems.
- Ensures computers in a distributed system work in sync as a single state machine. This idea is now fundamental in the field.

Finds interesting problems in the industry, akin to painting from nature (reference to Renoir).
Prefers practical problem solving over theoretical contemplation.

Mutual Exclusion Problem: Prevents multiple processes from using the printer simultaneously.
Processes choose a number, and the lowest number gets access.
Unique aspect: Works even if the number read is inconsistent (e.g., instead of 47 or 100, the system might read 4700 or 9999).
Highlights the elegance and robustness of the algorithm beyond initial design intentions.