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Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.

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
Inspirational
Prerequisite
Reliability
Prerequisites
Simplicity
Inspiring

More quotes by Edsger Dijkstra

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We must be very careful when we give advice to younger people sometimes they follow it!
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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.
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Teaching COBOL ought to be regarded as a criminal act.
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PL/1, the fatal disease, belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Beauty is our business.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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
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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
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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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Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs.
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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Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.
Edsger Dijkstra
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Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.
Edsger Dijkstra