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
giving needs tasks
It is not the task of the University to offer what society asks for, but to give what society needs.
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
communication stronger thanks
Thanks to the greatly improved possibility of communication, we overrate its importance. Even stronger, we underrate the importance of isolation.
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.
thinking profound tools
The tools we use have a profound and devious influence on our thinking habits, and therefore on our thinking abilities.
thinking progress pieces
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
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.
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.
giving people advice
We must be very careful when we give advice to younger people: sometimes they follow it!
debugging want waste
If you want more effective programmers, you will discover that they should not waste their time debugging, they should not introduce the bugs to start with.
programming
Beauty is our business.
fall views average
Don't blame me for the fact that competent programming, as I view it as an intellectual possibility, will be too difficult for the average programmer, you must not fall into the trap of rejecting a surgical technique because it is beyond the capabilities of the barber in his shop around the corner.
jargon brevity aim
Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.
real expression attention
In passing I draw attention to another English expression which often occurs in Dutch texts: "the real world". In Dutch - and I am afraid not in Dutch alone - its usage is almost always a symptom of a violent anti-intellectualism.