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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.

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
Long
Convinced
Way
Ways
World
Point
Stills
Mend
Still
Urge
Littles
Adequate
Little
Urges
Trying
Perfectly

More quotes by Edsger Dijkstra

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Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.
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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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It used to be the program's purpose to instruct our computers it became the computer's purpose to execute our programs.
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Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California.
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Beauty is our business.
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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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If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
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Experience does by no means automatically leads to wisdom and understanding.
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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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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.
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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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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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There should be no such thing as boring mathematics.
Edsger Dijkstra
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Teaching COBOL ought to be regarded as a criminal act.
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Thank goodness we don't have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.
Edsger Dijkstra
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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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How do we convince people that in programming simplicity and clarity - in short: what mathematicians call elegance - are not a dispensable luxury, but a crucial matter that decides between success and failure?
Edsger Dijkstra
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The ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings.
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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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Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.
Edsger Dijkstra