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The prisoner falls in love with his chains.

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
Love
Prisoner
Falls
Chains
Fall

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Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.
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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.
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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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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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Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California.
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Teaching COBOL ought to be regarded as a criminal act.
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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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Too few people recognize that the high technology so celebrated today is essentially a mathematical technology.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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Probably I am very naive, but I also think I prefer to remain so, at least for the time being and perhaps for the rest of my life.
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APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection.
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.
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The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity.
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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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There should be no such thing as boring mathematics.
Edsger Dijkstra
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I don't need to waste my time with a computer just because I am a computer scientist.
Edsger Dijkstra