Talk:Fundamental theorem of software engineering

This expression is considerable older than 2005. In 1976 a spoof examination question at University of Cambridge Computer laboratory, written by an undergraduate for the examiners read "All problems in computer science can be solved by another layer of virtual indirection. Discuss" I now who set it (I was an examiner). It was a dig at the operating system group of Roger Needham and the CAP project

Jpff (talk) 17:39, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

There's a similar expression in "Supporting distributed applications: experience with Eden" in the "Proceedings of the Tenth ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, 1-4 December 1985, Orcas Island, Washington", in a footnote on p. 183: "Flexibility can be regained through that universal panacea, as an extra level of indirection." It cites "Needham, R. Quoted on p279 of" Wulf; W. A., Levin, R. and Harbison, S. P. HYDRAIC.mmp: An Experimental Computer System. McGraw-Hill, 1981, which further supports Jpff's comment. I don't have access to that book to verify. -- Andrew Dalke

Regarding notability
I encountered the acronym FTSE (with this meaning) in a book, which didn't define it or cite a source, so I tried to look it up in Wikipedia, but that failed. When I eventually found out the meaning, I created this short article to save other people the same trouble in the future. I think it should be possible to find the term in Wikipedia. Perhaps it doesn't need its own article, but on the other hand, there's no harm in having short articles. Eleuther (talk) 15:35, 24 May 2012 (UTC)