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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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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
Company
Employees
Suffering
Dogma
Individual
Employee
Stability
Sake
Managerial
Independent
Suffers
Motivational
Competence
Industry
Continuity

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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.
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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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Don't compete with me: firstly, I have more experience, and secondly, I have chosen the weapons.
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Thank goodness we don't have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.
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It is not the task of the University to offer what society asks for, but to give what society needs.
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Too few people recognize that the high technology so celebrated today is essentially a mathematical technology.
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Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.
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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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Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.
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The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity.
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Teaching to unsuspecting youngsters the effective use of formal methods is one of the joys of life because it is so extremely rewarding.
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We must be very careful when we give advice to younger people sometimes they follow it!
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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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The use of COBOL cripples the mind its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.
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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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Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.
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Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
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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.
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Teaching COBOL ought to be regarded as a criminal act.
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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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