Edsger Dijkstra
Edsger Dijkstra
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra; 11 May 1930 – 6 August 2002) was a Dutch computer scientist. A theoretical physicist by training, he worked as a programmer at the Mathematisch Centrumfrom 1952 to 1962. He was a professor of mathematics at the Eindhoven University of Technologyand a research fellow at the Burroughs Corporation. He held the Schlumberger Centennial Chair in Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin from 1984 until 1999, and retired as Professor Emeritus in 1999...
Edsger Dijkstra quotes about
today bugs sticks
In the good old days physicists repeated each other's experiments, just to be sure. Today they stick to FORTRAN, so that they can share each other's programs, bugs included.
bugs absence programming
Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs.
bugs absence program
Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!
funny-inspirational debugging bugs
If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
excitement knows
Much of the excitement we get out of our work is that we don't really know what we are doing.
computer question submarine whether
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
clever humility skulls
The competent programmer is fully aware of the limited size of his own skull. He therefore approaches his task with full humility, and avoids clever tricks like the plague.
thinking profound tools
The tools we use have a profound and devious influence on our thinking habits, and therefore on our thinking abilities.
students impossible programming
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.
appreciation jobs humble
We shall do a much better programming job, provided that we approach the task with a full appreciation of its tremendous difficulty, provided that we stick to modest and elegant programming languages, provided that we respect the intrinsic limitations of the human mind and approach the task as Very Humble Programmers.
years mind use
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.
communication stronger thanks
Thanks to the greatly improved possibility of communication, we overrate its importance. Even stronger, we underrate the importance of isolation.
hard-work appreciate simplicity
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
silly effort mind
The effort of using machines to mimic the human mind has always struck me as rather silly. I would rather use them to mimic something better.