Edsger Dijkstra Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• Industry suffers from the managerial dogma that for the sake of stability and continuity, the company should be independent of the competence of individual employees.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Motivational, Independent, Suffering

  "Computing Science: Achievements and Challenges". Edsger Dijkstra's keynote address at the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing in San Antonio, Texas, www.cs.utexas.edu. March 1, 1999.

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• Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Bugs, Absence, Programming

  "Software Engineering Techniques". Report on a conference sponsored by the NATO Science Committee in Rome, Italy, edited by J.N. Buxton and B. Randell, October 27-31, 1969.

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• Beware of "the real world". A speaker's apeal to it is always an invitation not to challenge his tacit assumptions.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Real, Challenges, World

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• Thank goodness we don't have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Serious, Ridiculous, Problem

  Edsger W. Dijkstra (2012). “Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective”, p.101, Springer Science & Business Media

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• The ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Quality, Ability, Discerning

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• The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Witty, Humorous, Teaching

  "How do we tell truths that might hurt?" by Edsger Dijkstra, June 18, 1975.

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• It used to be the program's purpose to instruct our computers; it became the computer's purpose to execute our programs.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Purpose, Computer, Program

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1976). “A Discipline of Programming”, Prentice Hall

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• The effective exploitation of his powers of abstraction must be regarded as one of the most vital activities of a competent programmer.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Exploitation, Programmers, Activity

  "The Humble Programmer". Edsger Dijkstra's ACM Turing Award lecture, "Communications of the ACM", Volume 15, No. 10, www.cs.utexas.edu. October 1972.

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• 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.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Real, Expression, Attention

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• Yes, I share your concern: how to program well -though a teachable topic- is hardly taught. The situation is similar to that in mathematics, where the explicit curriculum is confined to mathematical results; how to do mathematics is something the student must absorb by osmosis, so to speak. One reason for preferring symbol-manipulating, calculating arguments is that their design is much better teachable than the design of verbal/pictorial arguments. Large-scale introduction of courses on such calculational methodology, however, would encounter unsurmoutable political problems.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Learning, Osmosis, Design

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• Production speed is severely slowed down if one works with half-time people who have other obligations as well. This is at least a factor of four; probably it is worse.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  People, Half Time, Four

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• About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Stupid, Axes, Trying

  Edsger W. Dijkstra (2012). “Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective”, p.130, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Our intellectual powers are rather geared to master static relations and that our powers to visualize processes evolving in time are relatively poorly developed. For that reason we should do (as wise programmers aware of our limitations) our utmost to shorten the conceptual gap between the static program and the dynamic process, to make the correspondence between the program (spread out in text space) and the process (spread out in time) as trivial as possible.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Wise, Learning, Space

  "A Case against the GO TO Statement" by Edsger Dijkstra, 1968.

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• John von Neumann draws attention to what seemed to him a contrast. He remarked that for simple mechanisms, it is often easier to describe how they work than what they do, while for more complicated mechanisms, it is usually the other way around.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Learning, Simple, Attention

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• LISP has jokingly been described as "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer." I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavour of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Intelligent, Thinking, Numbers

  "The Humble Programmer". Edsger Dijkstra's ACM Turing Award lecture, "Communications of the ACM", Volume 15, No. 10, www.cs.utexas.edu. October 1972.

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• 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.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Today, Bugs, Sticks

  Edsger W. Dijkstra (2012). “Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective”, p.130, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Probably I am very naive, but I also think I prefer to remain so, at least for the time being and perhaps for the rest of my life.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Thinking, Naive

  "Where is Russell's paradox?" by Edsger Dijkstra, www.cs.utexas.edu. May 22, 1985.

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• We are all shaped by the tools we use, in particular: the formalisms we use shape our thinking habits, for better or for worse, and that means that we have to be very careful in the choice of what we learn and teach, for unlearning is not really possible.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Learning, Mean, Thinking

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• Teaching to unsuspecting youngsters the effective use of formal methods is one of the joys of life because it is so extremely rewarding.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Teaching, Joy, Use

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• I would therefore like to posit that computing's central challenge, how not to make a mess of it, has not yet been met.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Challenges, Mets, Mess

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• The traditional mathematician recognizes and appreciates mathematical elegance when he sees it. I propose to go one step further, and to consider elegance an essential ingredient of mathematics: if it is clumsy, it is not mathematics.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Appreciate, Ingredients, Steps

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• So-called "natural language" is wonderful for the purposes it was created for, such as to be rude in, to tell jokes in, to cheat or to make love in (and Theorists of Literary Criticism can even be content-free in it), but it is hopelessly inadequate when we have to deal unambiguously with situations of great intricacy, situations which unavoidably arise in such activities as legislation, arbitration, mathematics or programming.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Rude, Making Love, Criticism

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• Mathematicians are like managers - they want improvement without change.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Want, Improvement, Mathematician

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• 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.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Mistake, Past, Perfection

  Edsger W. Dijkstra (2012). “Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective”, p.130, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Please don't fall into the trap of believing that I am terribly dogmatical about the go to statement. I have the uncomfortable feeling that others are making a religion out of it, as if the conceptual problems of programming could be solved by a single trick, by a simple form of coding discipline!

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Believe, Fall, Simple

  "Structured Programming with go to Statements". Donald E. Knuth, "ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)", Volume 6, Issue 4, December 1974.

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