E. W. Dijkstra Quotes & Sayings

Yes, I share your concern: how to program well -though a teachable topic- is hardly taught. The situation is similar to that in mathematics, where the explicit curriculum is confined to mathematical results; how to do mathematics is something the student must absorb by osmosis, so to speak. One reason for preferring symbol-manipulating, calculating arguments is that their design is much better teachable than the design of verbal/pictorial arguments. Large-scale introduction of courses on such calculational methodology, however, would encounter unsurmoutable political problems. — Edsger Dijkstra

Mentally mutilated potential programmers beyond hope of regeneration. — Edsger Dijkstra

Please don't fall into the trap of believing that I am terribly dogmatical about [the goto statement]. I have the uncomfortable feeling that others are making a religion out of it, as if the conceptual problems of programming could be solved by a single trick, by a simple form of coding discipline! — Edsger Dijkstra

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. — Edsger Dijkstra

Computer science has as much to do with computers as astronomy has to do with telescopes. — Edsger Dijkstra

Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence! — Edsger W. Dijkstra

When we take the position that it is not only the programmer's responsibility to produce a correct program but also to demonstrate its correctness in a convincing manner, then the above remarks have a profound influence on the programmer's activity: the object he has to produce must be usefully structured. — Edsger Dijkstra

In the software business there are many enterprises for which it is not clear that science can help them; that science should try is not clear either. — Edsger Dijkstra

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

I think of the company advertising "Thought Processors" or the college pretending that learning BASIC suffices or at least helps, whereas the teaching of BASIC should be rated as a criminal offence: it mutilates the mind beyond recovery. — Edsger Dijkstra

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 W. Dijkstra

When I came back from Munich, it was September, and I was Professor of Mathematics at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Later I learned that I had been the Department's third choice, after two numerical analysts had turned the invitation down; the decision to invite me had not been an easy one, on the one hand because I had not really studied mathematics, and on the other hand because of my sandals, my beard and my "arrogance" (whatever that may be). — Edsger Dijkstra

Industry suffers from the managerial dogma that for the sake of stability and continuity, the company should be independent of the competence of individual employees. — Edsger Dijkstra

In passing I draw attention to another English expression which often occurs in Dutch texts: "the real world". In Dutch - and I am afraid not in Dutch alone - its usage is almost always a symptom of a violent anti-intellectualism. — Edsger Dijkstra

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. — Edsger Dijkstra

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. — Edsger Dijkstra

Mathematicians are like managers - they want improvement without change. — Edsger Dijkstra

We are all shaped by the tools we use, in particular: the formalisms we use shape our thinking habits, for better or for worse, and that means that we have to be very careful in the choice of what we learn and teach, for unlearning is not really possible. — Edsger Dijkstra

The prisoner falls in love with his chains. — Edsger Dijkstra

With young people everything is much more on the surface - all the emotions; when you get older you know how to hide things. — Rineke Dijkstra

Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure. — Edsger Dijkstra

I do think that my work has gotten calmer, and that the violence of some of the earlier series was necessary to reach the higher degree of concentration in the later ones. — Rineke Dijkstra

I don't need to waste my time with a computer just because I am a computer scientist. — Edsger Dijkstra

Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because thy require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated. — Edsger W. Dijkstra

Teaching COBOL ought to be regarded as a criminal act. — Edsger Dijkstra

If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. — Edsger Dijkstra

Are you quite sure that all those bells and whistles, all those wonderful facilities of your so called powerful programming languages, belong to the solution set rather than the problem set? — Edsger Dijkstra

The traditional mathematician recognizes and appreciates mathematical elegance when he sees it. I propose to go one step further, and to consider elegance an essential ingredient of mathematics: if it is clumsy, it is not mathematics. — Edsger Dijkstra

I felt that the beach portraits were all self-portraits. That moment of unease, that attempt to find a pose, it was all about me. — Rineke Dijkstra

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