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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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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
Either
Confronted
Powerful
Computers
Times
Faced
Problem
Programming
Machines
Million
Computer
Mild
Millions
Gigantic

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Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!
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Mentally mutilated potential programmers beyond hope of regeneration.
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Thank goodness we don't have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.
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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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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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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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Don't compete with me: firstly, I have more experience, and secondly, I have chosen the weapons.
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The ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings.
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It is a mistake to think that programmers wares are programs. Programmers have to produce trustworthy solutions and present it in the form of cogent arguments. Programs source code is just the accompanying material to which these arguments are to be applied to.
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The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity.
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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.
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Beauty is our business.
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Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
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Too few people recognize that the high technology so celebrated today is essentially a mathematical technology.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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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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Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.
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