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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
Difficult
Mathematicians
Better
Applied
Mathematician
Programming
Branches
Mathematics
Remain
Pure
Poorer
More quotes by Edsger Dijkstra
There is very little point in trying to urge the world to mend its ways as long as that world is still convinced that its ways are perfectly adequate.
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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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Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California.
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The use of COBOL cripples the mind its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.
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Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.
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I don't need to waste my time with a computer just because I am a computer scientist.
Edsger Dijkstra
Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.
Edsger Dijkstra
The effective exploitation of his powers of abstraction must be regarded as one of the most vital activities of a competent programmer.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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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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Beauty is our business.
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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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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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Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, biology is about microscopes or chemistry is about beakers and test tubes. Science is not about tools. It is about how we use them, and what we find out when we do.
Edsger Dijkstra
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.
Edsger Dijkstra
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.
Edsger Dijkstra
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
The ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings.
Edsger Dijkstra
There should be no such thing as boring mathematics.
Edsger Dijkstra
Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs.
Edsger Dijkstra