Edsger W. Dijkstra Quotes (68 quotes, page 2)

Edsger W. Dijkstra Quotes

page 2

Edsger Wybe Dijkstra was a Dutch systems scientist, programmer, software engineer, science essayist, and pioneer in computing science. A theoretical physicist by training, he worked as a programmer at the Mathematisch Centrum from 1952 to 1962. A university professor for much of his life, Dijkstra held the Schlumberger Centennial Chair in Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin from 1984 until his retirement in 1999. He was a professor of mathematics at the Eindhoven University of Technology and a research fellow at the Burroughs Corporation .

One of the most influential figures of computing science's founding generation, Dijkstra helped shape the new discipline from both an engineering and a theoretical perspective. His fundamental contributions cover diverse areas of computing science, including compiler construction, operating systems, distributed systems, sequential and concurrent programming, programming paradigm and methodology, programming language research, program design, program development, program verification, software engineering principles, graph algorithms, and philosophical foundations of computer programming and computer science. Many of his papers are the source of new research areas. Several concepts and problems that are now standard in computer science were first identified by Dijkstra and/or bear names coined by him. As a foremost opponent of the mechanizing view of computing science, he refuted the use of the concepts of 'computer science' and 'software engineering' as umbrella terms for academic disciplines.

Until the mid-1960s computer programming was considered more an art than a scientific discipline. In Harlan Mills's words , "programming [before the 1970s] was regarded as a private, puzzle-solving activity of writing computer instructions to work as a program". In the late 1960s, computer programming was in a state of crisis. Dijkstra was one of a small group of academics and industrial programmers who advocated a new programming style to improve the quality of programs. Dijkstra, who had a background in mathematics and physics, was one of the driving forces behind the acceptance of computer programming as a scientific discipline. He coined the phrase "structured programming" and during the 1970s this became the new programming orthodoxy. His ideas about structured programming helped lay the foundations for the birth and development of the professional discipline of software engineering, enabling programmers to organize and manage increasingly complex software projects. As Bertrand Meyer noted, "The revolution in views of programming started by Dijkstra's iconoclasm led to a movement known as structured programming, which advocated a systematic, rational approach to program construction. Structured programming is the basis for all that has been done since in programming methodology, including object-oriented programming."The academic study of concurrent computing started in the 1960s, with Dijkstra credited with being the first paper in this field, identifying and solving the mutual exclusion problem. He was also one of the early pioneers of the research on principles of distributed computing. His foundational work on concurrency, semaphores, mutual exclusion, deadlock , finding shortest paths in graphs, fault-tolerance, self-stabilization, among many other contributions comprises many of the pillars upon which the field of distributed computing is built. Shortly before his death in 2002, he received the ACM PODC Influential-Paper Award in distributed computing for his work on self-stabilization of program computation. This annual award was renamed the Dijkstra Prize the following year, in his honor. As the prize, sponsored jointly by the ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing and the EATCS International Symposium on Distributed Computing , recognizes that "No other individual has had a larger influence on research in principles of distributed computing". Wikipedia

✵ 11. May 1930 – 6. August 2002

Edsger W. Dijkstra: 68 quotes 2 likes

Edsger W. Dijkstra Quotes

“The major cause [of the software crisis] is that the machines have become several orders of magnitude more powerful! To put it quite bluntly: as long as there were no machines, programming was no problem at all; when we had a few weak computers, programming became a mild problem, and now we have gigantic computers, programming has become an equally gigantic problem. In this sense the electronic industry has not solved a single problem, it has only created them, it has created the problem of using its products.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra

1970s, The Humble Programmer (1972)

Problem , Sense

“For a number of years I have been familiar with the observation that the quality of programmers is a decreasing function of the density of go to statements in the programs they produce. More recently I discovered why the use of the go to statement has such disastrous effects, and I became convinced that the go to statement should be abolished from all "higher level" programming languages.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra

1960s

“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 W. Dijkstra

Refering to his conclusion to the Barber paradox or Russell's paradox.
Dijkstra (1985) Where is Russell's paradox? http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD923a.html (EWD 923A).
1980s

Life , Thinking , Time

“This is generally true: any sizeable piece of program, or even a complete program package, is only a useful tool that can be used in a reliable fashion, provided that the documentation pertinent for the user is much shorter than the program text. If any machine or system requires a very thick manual, its usefulness becomes for that very circumstance subject to doubt!”

Edsger W. Dijkstra

Dijkstra, "On the reliability of programs" https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD303.html (EWD 303).
Unknown date

Fashion

“[Though computer science is a fairly new discipline, it is predominantly based on the Cartesian world view. As Edsgar W. Dijkstra has pointed out] A scientific discipline emerges with the - usually rather slow!”

Edsger W. Dijkstra

discovery of which aspects can be meaningfully 'studied in isolation for the sake of their own consistency.
Dijkstra (1982) as cited in: Douglas Schuler, Douglas Schuler Jonathan Jacky (1989) Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing, 1987. Vol 1, p. 84.
1980s

World , Science

“LISP has been jokingly described as "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer."”

Edsger W. Dijkstra

I think that description a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts.
1970s, The Humble Programmer (1972)

Way , Intelligence

“Don't blame me for the fact that competent programming, as I view it as an intellectual possibility, will be too difficult for "the average programmer"”

Edsger W. Dijkstra

you must not fall into the trap of rejecting a surgical technique because it is beyond the capabilities of the barber in his shop around the corner.
Dijkstra (1975) Comments at a Symposium http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD05xx/EWD512.html (EWD 512).
1970s

“Using PL/1 must be like flying a plane with 7000 buttons, switches and handles to manipulate in the cockpit.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra

1970s, The Humble Programmer (1972)

Flying

“Some people found error messages they couldn't ignore more annoying than wrong results, and, when judging the relative merits of programming languages, some still seem to equate "the ease of programming" with the ease of making undetected mistakes.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra

Dijkstra (1976-79) On the foolishness of "natural language programming" https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667.html (EWD 667)
1970s

People , Error