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The use of COBOL cripples the mind its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.

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
Mind
Witty
Criminals
Cobol
Humorous
Cripples
Computer
Programmers
Therefore
Regarded
Teaching
Offense
Technology
Criminal
Use
Programming

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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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We must be very careful when we give advice to younger people sometimes they follow it!
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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.
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Mentally mutilated potential programmers beyond hope of regeneration.
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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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APL is a mistake, carried through to 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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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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We shall do a much better programming job, provided that we approach the task with a full appreciation of its tremendous difficulty, provided that we stick to modest and elegant programming languages, provided that we respect the intrinsic limitations of the human mind and approach the task as Very Humble Programmers.
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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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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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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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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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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 problems of the real world are primarily those you are left with when you refuse to apply their effective solutions.
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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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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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Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California.
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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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