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If there is one 'scientific' discovery I am proud of, it is the discovery of the habit of writing without publication in mind.

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
Habit
Proud
Without
Writing
Mind
Publication
Scientific
Discovery

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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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... 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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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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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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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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John von Neumann draws attention to what seemed to him a contrast. He remarked that for simple mechanisms, it is often easier to describe how they work than what they do, while for more complicated mechanisms, it is usually the other way around.
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The ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings.
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Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
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Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.
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A most important, but also most elusive, aspect of any tool is its influence on the habits of those who train themselves in its use. If the tool is a programming language this influence is, whether we like it or not, an influence on our thinking habits.... A programming language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits.
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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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Beauty is our business.
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The computing scientist's main challenge is not to get confused by the complexities of his own making.
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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?
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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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Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!
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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.
Edsger Dijkstra
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I don't need to waste my time with a computer just because I am a computer scientist.
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Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs.
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There should be no such thing as boring mathematics.
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