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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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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
Program
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Used
Bugs
Never
Testing
Programming
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The prisoner falls in love with his chains.
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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.
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If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
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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.
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A convincing demonstration of correctness being impossible as long as the mechanism is regarded as a black box, our only hope lies in not regarding the mechanism as a black box.
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PL/1, the fatal disease, belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.
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Thank goodness we don't have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.
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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.
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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.
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Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
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There should be no such thing as boring mathematics.
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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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Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.
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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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The ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings.
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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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It is not the task of the University to offer what society asks for, but to give what society needs.
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The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity.
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Much of the excitement we get out of our work is that we don't really know what we are doing.
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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.
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