Edsger Dijkstra
Edsger Dijkstra
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra; 11 May 1930 – 6 August 2002) was a Dutch computer scientist. A theoretical physicist by training, he worked as a programmer at the Mathematisch Centrumfrom 1952 to 1962. He was a professor of mathematics at the Eindhoven University of Technologyand a research fellow at the Burroughs Corporation. He held the Schlumberger Centennial Chair in Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin from 1984 until 1999, and retired as Professor Emeritus in 1999...
Edsger Dijkstra quotes about
clever humility skulls
The competent programmer is fully aware of the limited size of his own skull. He therefore approaches his task with full humility, and avoids clever tricks like the plague.
today bugs sticks
In the good old days physicists repeated each other's experiments, just to be sure. Today they stick to FORTRAN, so that they can share each other's programs, bugs included.
thinking profound tools
The tools we use have a profound and devious influence on our thinking habits, and therefore on our thinking abilities.
students impossible programming
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
appreciation jobs humble
We shall do a much better programming job, provided that we approach the task with a full appreciation of its tremendous difficulty, provided that we stick to modest and elegant programming languages, provided that we respect the intrinsic limitations of the human mind and approach the task as Very Humble Programmers.
years mind use
FORTRAN, the infantile disorder, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
communication stronger thanks
Thanks to the greatly improved possibility of communication, we overrate its importance. Even stronger, we underrate the importance of isolation.
hard-work appreciate simplicity
Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better
silly effort mind
The effort of using machines to mimic the human mind has always struck me as rather silly. I would rather use them to mimic something better.
thinking progress pieces
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
intelligent thinking numbers
Lisp has jokingly been called "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer". I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts.
quality ability identifying
The ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings.
learning ideas california
Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California.
mistake past perfection
APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.