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There should be no such thing as boring mathematics.

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
Boring
Mathematics
Thing

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Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.
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Beauty is our business.
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Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.
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Mentally mutilated potential programmers beyond hope of regeneration.
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Production speed is severely slowed down if one works with half-time people who have other obligations as well. This is at least a factor of four probably it is worse.
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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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Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.
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Too few people recognize that the high technology so celebrated today is essentially a mathematical technology.
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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 is not the task of the University to offer what society asks for, but to give what society needs.
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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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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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Teaching to unsuspecting youngsters the effective use of formal methods is one of the joys of life because it is so extremely rewarding.
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I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself Dijkstra would not have liked this, well, that would be enough immortality for me.
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Experience does by no means automatically leads to wisdom and understanding.
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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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I don't need to waste my time with a computer just because I am a computer scientist.
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If in physics there's something you don't understand, you can always hide behind the uncharted depths of nature. You can always blame God. You didn't make it so complex yourself. But if your program doesn't work, there is no one to hide behind. You cannot hide behind an obstinate nature. If it doesn't work, you've messed up.
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It is a mistake to think that programmers wares are programs. Programmers have to produce trustworthy solutions and present it in the form of cogent arguments. Programs source code is just the accompanying material to which these arguments are to be applied to.
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Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs.
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