Edsger Dijkstra Quotes - Page 4

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• 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.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Years, Mind, Use

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

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• In this respect a program is like a poem: you cannot write a poem without writing it. Yet people talk about programming as if it were a production process and measure "programmer productivity" in terms of "number of lines of code produced". In so doing they book that number on the wrong side of the ledger: we should always refer to "the number of lines of code spent".

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Book, Writing, Numbers

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• [Though computer science is a fairly new discipline, it is predominantly based on the Cartesian world view. As Edsgar W. Dijkstra has pointed out] A scientific discipline emerges with the - usually rather slow! - discovery of which aspects can be meaningfully 'studied' in isolation for the sake of their own consistency.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Discovery, Views, Discipline

  "Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing, 1987, Volume 1". Book edited by Douglas Schuler and Jonathan Jacky, 1989.

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• In the software business there are many enterprises for which it is not clear that science can help them; that science should try is not clear either.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Trying, Helping, Should

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• I now have had my foggy crystal ball for quite a long time. Its predictions are invariably gloomy and usually correct, but I am quite used to that and they won't keep me from giving you a few suggestions, even if it is merely an exercise in futility whose only effect is to make you feel guilty.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Exercise, Long, Giving

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• A programming language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Thinking, Profound, Tools

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• I think of the company advertising "Thought Processors" or the college pretending that learning BASIC suffices or at least helps, whereas the teaching of BASIC should be rated as a criminal offence: it mutilates the mind beyond recovery.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Teaching, Recovery, College

  "The threats to computing science". Edsger Dijkstra remarks at ACM South Central Regional Conference, www.cs.utexas.edu. November 16-18, 1984.

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• Many mathematicians derive part of their self-esteem by feeling themselves the proud heirs of a long tradition of rational thinking; I am afraid they idealize their cultural ancestors.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Self Esteem, Thinking, Long

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• When we take the position that it is not only the programmer's responsibility to produce a correct program but also to demonstrate its correctness in a convincing manner, then the above remarks have a profound influence on the programmer's activity: the object he has to produce must be usefully structured.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Responsibility, Profound, Influence

  "Notes On Structured Programming" by Edsger Dijkstra, April 1970.

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• Write a paper promising salvation, make it a "structured" something or a "virtual" something, or "abstract," "distributed" or "higher-order" or "applicative" and you can almost be certain of having started a new cult.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Writing, Order, Paper

  "My hopes of computing science" by Edsger Dijkstra, www.cs.utexas.edu. April 1979.

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• The problems of the real world are primarily those you are left with when you refuse to apply their effective solutions.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Real, World, Problem

  "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science" by Edsger Dijkstra, www.cs.utexas.edu. December 2, 1988.

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• A most important, but also most elusive, aspect of any tool is its influence on the habits of those who train themselves in its use. If the tool is a programming language this influence is, whether we like it or not, an influence on our thinking habits.... A programming language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Learning, Thinking, Profound

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

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• Why has elegance found so little following? That is the reality of it. Elegance has the disadvantage, if that's what it is, that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Hard Work, Reality, Appreciate

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• ... as a slow-witted human being I have a very small head and I had better learn to live with it and to respect my limitations and give them full credit, rather than to try to ignore them, for the latter vain effort will be punished by failure.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Giving, Design, Effort

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• Mentally mutilated potential programmers beyond hope of regeneration.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Regeneration, Programmers

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• Beauty is our business.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Programming

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• Computer science has as much to do with computers as astronomy has to do with telescopes.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Telescopes, Computer, Astronomy

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• The use of anthropomorphic terminology forces you linguistically to adopt an operational view. And it makes it practically impossible to argue about programs independently of their being executed.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Views, Use, Impossible

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• 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.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Appreciation, Jobs, Humble

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• In their capacity as a tool, computers will be but a ripple on the surface of our culture. In their capacity as intellectual challenge, they are without precedent in the cultural history of mankind.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Challenges, Intellectual, Culture

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• PL/1, the fatal disease, belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Humorous, Disease, Problem

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• Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Learning, Thinking, Progress

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• I mentioned the non-competitive spirit explicitly, because these days, excellence is a fashionable concept. But excellence is a competitive notion, and that is not what we are heading for: we are heading for perfection.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Perfection, Excellence, Spirit

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• There is very little point in trying to urge the world to mend its ways as long as that world is still convinced that its ways are perfectly adequate.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Long, Trying, World

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• APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Mistake, Perfection, Language

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

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