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If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.

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
Putting
Developers
Computer
Removing
Funny
Removal
Process
Programmers
Must
Bugs
Programming
Software
Code
Debugging

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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 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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Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.
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... as a slow-witted human being I have a very small head and I had better learn to live with it and to respect my limitations and give them full credit, rather than to try to ignore them, for the latter vain effort will be punished by failure.
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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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Too few people recognize that the high technology so celebrated today is essentially a mathematical technology.
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The prisoner falls in love with his chains.
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Don't compete with me: firstly, I have more experience, and secondly, I have chosen the weapons.
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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 not the task of the University to offer what society asks for, but to give what society needs.
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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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John von Neumann draws attention to what seemed to him a contrast. He remarked that for simple mechanisms, it is often easier to describe how they work than what they do, while for more complicated mechanisms, it is usually the other way around.
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Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.
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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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I think of the company advertising Thought Processors or the college pretending that learning BASIC suffices or at least helps, whereas the teaching of BASIC should be rated as a criminal offence: it mutilates the mind beyond recovery.
Edsger Dijkstra
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Teaching COBOL ought to be regarded as a criminal act.
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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.
Edsger Dijkstra
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Thank goodness we don't have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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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APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection.
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