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
Regarded
Criminal
Criminals
Teaching
Ought
Cobol

More quotes by Edsger Dijkstra

Image
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.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Mentally mutilated potential programmers beyond hope of regeneration.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Experience does by no means automatically leads to wisdom and understanding.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
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
Image
We must be very careful when we give advice to younger people sometimes they follow it!
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
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.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself Dijkstra would not have liked this, well, that would be enough immortality for me.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
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.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
PL/1, the fatal disease, belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.
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
If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
It used to be the program's purpose to instruct our computers it became the computer's purpose to execute our programs.
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
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
Image
APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.
Edsger Dijkstra
Image
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.
Edsger Dijkstra