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Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
Edsger Dijkstra
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Edsger Dijkstra
Age: 72 †
Born: 1930
Born: May 11
Died: 2002
Died: August 5
Computer Scientist
Engineer
Mathematician
Physicist
Scientist
University Teacher
R'dam
Edsger Dijkstra
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra
Dijkstra
EWD
E.W. Dijkstra
Astronomy
Computers
Classroom
Favourite
Cobol
Programming
Computation
Computer
Microscopes
Technology
Telescopes
Science
Hardware
More quotes by Edsger Dijkstra
If in physics there's something you don't understand, you can always hide behind the uncharted depths of nature. You can always blame God. You didn't make it so complex yourself. But if your program doesn't work, there is no one to hide behind. You cannot hide behind an obstinate nature. If it doesn't work, you've messed up.
Edsger Dijkstra
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
The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity.
Edsger Dijkstra
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
PL/1, the fatal disease, belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.
Edsger Dijkstra
I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself Dijkstra would not have liked this, well, that would be enough immortality for me.
Edsger Dijkstra
Experience does by no means automatically leads to wisdom and understanding.
Edsger Dijkstra
How do we convince people that in programming simplicity and clarity - in short: what mathematicians call elegance - are not a dispensable luxury, but a crucial matter that decides between success and failure?
Edsger Dijkstra
Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California.
Edsger Dijkstra
When we had no computers, we had no programming problem either. When we had a few computers, we had a mild programming problem. Confronted with machines a million times as powerful, we are faced with a gigantic programming problem.
Edsger Dijkstra
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
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.
Edsger Dijkstra
If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
Edsger Dijkstra
Too few people recognize that the high technology so celebrated today is essentially a mathematical technology.
Edsger Dijkstra
The use of COBOL cripples the mind its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.
Edsger Dijkstra
The computing scientist's main challenge is not to get confused by the complexities of his own making.
Edsger Dijkstra
It is not the task of the University to offer what society asks for, but to give what society needs.
Edsger Dijkstra
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
Thank goodness we don't have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.
Edsger Dijkstra
The prisoner falls in love with his chains.
Edsger Dijkstra
