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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
Mathematics
Thing
Boring

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The prisoner falls in love with his chains.
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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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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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Don't compete with me: firstly, I have more experience, and secondly, I have chosen the weapons.
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The use of anthropomorphic terminology forces you linguistically to adopt an operational view. And it makes it practically impossible to argue about programs independently of their being executed.
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Teaching COBOL ought to be regarded as a criminal act.
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Experience does by no means automatically leads to wisdom and understanding.
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How do we convince people that in programming simplicity and clarity - in short: what mathematicians call elegance - are not a dispensable luxury, but a crucial matter that decides between success and failure?
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Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.
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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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Mentally mutilated potential programmers beyond hope of regeneration.
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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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Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.
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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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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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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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Thank goodness we don't have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.
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We must be very careful when we give advice to younger people sometimes they follow it!
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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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If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
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