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Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs.

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
Bugs
Testing
Programming
Absence
Presence
Shows

More quotes by Edsger Dijkstra

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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.
Edsger Dijkstra
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Teaching COBOL ought to be regarded as a criminal act.
Edsger Dijkstra
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Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
Edsger Dijkstra
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Too few people recognize that the high technology so celebrated today is essentially a mathematical technology.
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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The ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings.
Edsger Dijkstra
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Beauty is our business.
Edsger Dijkstra
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The computing scientist's main challenge is not to get confused by the complexities of his own making.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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?
Edsger Dijkstra
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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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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
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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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We must be very careful when we give advice to younger people sometimes they follow it!
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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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.
Edsger Dijkstra
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The prisoner falls in love with his chains.
Edsger Dijkstra
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Don't compete with me: firstly, I have more experience, and secondly, I have chosen the weapons.
Edsger Dijkstra
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Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.
Edsger Dijkstra
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It is not the task of the University to offer what society asks for, but to give what society needs.
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