Quote

Teaching COBOL ought to be regarded as a criminal act.

Edsger Dijkstra

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Criminals
Teaching
Ought
Cobol
Regarded
Criminal

More quotes by Edsger Dijkstra

Image
Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
PL/1, the fatal disease, belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
There should be no such thing as boring mathematics.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
The prisoner falls in love with his chains.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Production speed is severely slowed down if one works with half-time people who have other obligations as well. This is at least a factor of four probably it is worse.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
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
Image
The computing scientist's main challenge is not to get confused by the complexities of his own making.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
We must be very careful when we give advice to younger people sometimes they follow it!
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
The ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
The use of COBOL cripples the mind its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
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.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Mentally mutilated potential programmers beyond hope of regeneration.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
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.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
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.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity.
Edsger Dijkstra