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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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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
Essentially
Mathematical
Recognize
Mathematics
Technology
High
Today
People
Celebrated

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PL/1, the fatal disease, belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.
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Beauty is our business.
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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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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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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.
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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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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.
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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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Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, biology is about microscopes or chemistry is about beakers and test tubes. Science is not about tools. It is about how we use them, and what we find out when we do.
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Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.
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The problems of the real world are primarily those you are left with when you refuse to apply their effective solutions.
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Thank goodness we don't have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.
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The computing scientist's main challenge is not to get confused by the complexities of his own making.
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We must be very careful when we give advice to younger people sometimes they follow it!
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The prisoner falls in love with his chains.
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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.
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Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
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Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.
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LISP has jokingly been described as the most intelligent way to misuse a computer. I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavour of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts.
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Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs.
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