Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Computer
Ripple
Capacity
Precedent
Intellectual
Computers
Mankind
Tool
Challenges
Cultural
History
Surface
Culture
Challenge
Without
Tools
More quotes by Edsger Dijkstra
Much of the excitement we get out of our work is that we don't really know what we are doing.
Edsger Dijkstra
Beauty is our business.
Edsger Dijkstra
Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.
Edsger Dijkstra
Too few people recognize that the high technology so celebrated today is essentially a mathematical technology.
Edsger Dijkstra
The prisoner falls in love with his chains.
Edsger Dijkstra
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
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.
Edsger Dijkstra
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.
Edsger Dijkstra
PL/1, the fatal disease, belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.
Edsger Dijkstra
The problems of the real world are primarily those you are left with when you refuse to apply their effective solutions.
Edsger Dijkstra
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.
Edsger Dijkstra
Don't compete with me: firstly, I have more experience, and secondly, I have chosen the weapons.
Edsger Dijkstra
Teaching COBOL ought to be regarded as a criminal act.
Edsger Dijkstra
It used to be the program's purpose to instruct our computers it became the computer's purpose to execute our programs.
Edsger Dijkstra
Thank goodness we don't have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.
Edsger Dijkstra
The computing scientist's main challenge is not to get confused by the complexities of his own making.
Edsger Dijkstra
We must be very careful when we give advice to younger people sometimes they follow it!
Edsger Dijkstra
APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection.
Edsger Dijkstra
A convincing demonstration of correctness being impossible as long as the mechanism is regarded as a black box, our only hope lies in not regarding the mechanism as a black box.
Edsger Dijkstra
The ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings.
Edsger Dijkstra
