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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

More quotes by Edsger Dijkstra

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Teaching COBOL ought to be regarded as a criminal act.
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A convincing demonstration of correctness being impossible as long as the mechanism is regarded as a black box, our only hope lies in not regarding the mechanism as a black box.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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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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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Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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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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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Thank goodness we don't have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.
Edsger Dijkstra
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The ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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.
Edsger Dijkstra
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Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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.
Edsger Dijkstra
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I don't need to waste my time with a computer just because I am a computer scientist.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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.
Edsger Dijkstra
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The prisoner falls in love with his chains.
Edsger Dijkstra