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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
Never
Testing
Programming
Absence
Presence
Program
Show
Shows
Used
Bugs

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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 ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings.
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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.
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It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
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Thank goodness we don't have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.
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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.
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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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If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
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The computing scientist's main challenge is not to get confused by the complexities of his own making.
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The prisoner falls in love with his chains.
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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?
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Too few people recognize that the high technology so celebrated today is essentially a mathematical technology.
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I don't need to waste my time with a computer just because I am a computer scientist.
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Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California.
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APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection.
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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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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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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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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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