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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

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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
Branches
Mathematics
Remain
Pure
Poorer
Difficult
Mathematicians
Better
Applied
Mathematician
Programming

More quotes by 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.
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Mentally mutilated potential programmers 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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The computing scientist's main challenge is not to get confused by the complexities of his own making.
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I mentioned the non-competitive spirit explicitly, because these days, excellence is a fashionable concept. But excellence is a competitive notion, and that is not what we are heading for: we are heading for perfection.
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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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The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity.
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The effort of using machines to mimic the human mind has always struck me as rather silly. I would rather use them to mimic something better.
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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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If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
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Beauty is our business.
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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 ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings.
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Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.
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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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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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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 there is one 'scientific' discovery I am proud of, it is the discovery of the habit of writing without publication in mind.
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Experience does by no means automatically leads to wisdom and understanding.
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Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs.
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