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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
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Edsger Dijkstra
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra
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More quotes by Edsger Dijkstra

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It is a mistake to think that programmers wares are programs. Programmers have to produce trustworthy solutions and present it in the form of cogent arguments. Programs source code is just the accompanying material to which these arguments are to be applied to.
Edsger Dijkstra
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Experience does by no means automatically leads to wisdom and understanding.
Edsger Dijkstra
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I don't need to waste my time with a computer just because I am a computer scientist.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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
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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
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Don't compete with me: firstly, I have more experience, and secondly, I have chosen the weapons.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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
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Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.
Edsger Dijkstra
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We must be very careful when we give advice to younger people sometimes they follow it!
Edsger Dijkstra
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Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!
Edsger Dijkstra
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There should be no such thing as boring mathematics.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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
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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
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PL/1, the fatal disease, belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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
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It is not the task of the University to offer what society asks for, but to give what society needs.
Edsger Dijkstra
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The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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
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Thank goodness we don't have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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