Quote

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?

Edsger Dijkstra

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Luxury
Mathematicians
Simplicity
Decides
Failure
Elegance
Short
Mathematician
Call
Programming
Success
Crucial
Matter
Clarity
People
Convince
Dispensable

More quotes by Edsger Dijkstra

Image
Beauty is our business.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
It used to be the program's purpose to instruct our computers it became the computer's purpose to execute our programs.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Don't compete with me: firstly, I have more experience, and secondly, I have chosen the weapons.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Experience does by no means automatically leads to wisdom and understanding.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
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
Image
The prisoner falls in love with his chains.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
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.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
There is very little point in trying to urge the world to mend its ways as long as that world is still convinced that its ways are perfectly adequate.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
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.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Thank goodness we don't have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
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
Image
It is not the task of the University to offer what society asks for, but to give what society needs.
Edsger Dijkstra