Edsger W. Dijkstra quotes - page 3

Another two years later, in 1957, I married and Dutch marriage rites require you to state your profession and I stated that I was a programmer. But the municipal authorities of the town of Amsterdam did not accept it on the grounds that there was no such profession. And, believe it or not, but under the heading "profession” my marriage act shows the ridiculous entry "theoretical physicist!”. (Edsger W. Dijkstra)
In short, I suggest that the programmer should continue to understand what he is doing, that his growing product remains firmly within his intellectual grip. It is my sad experience that this suggestion is repulsive to the average experienced programmer, who clearly derives a major part of his professional excitement from not quite understanding what he is doing. In this streamlined age, one of our most undernourished psychological needs is the craving for Black Magic and apparently the automatic computer can satisfy this need for the professional software engineer, who is secretly enthralled by the gigantic risks he takes in his daring irresponsibility. For his frustrations I have no remedy...... View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
FORTRAN's tragic fate has been its wide acceptance, mentally chaining thousands and thousands of programmers to our past mistakes. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
May, in spite of all distractions generated by technology, all of you succeed in turning information into knowledge, knowledge into understanding, and understanding into wisdom. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
When FORTRAN has been called an infantile disorder, full PL/1, with its growth characteristics of a dangerous tumor, could turn out to be a fatal disease. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
We can found no scientific discipline, nor a hearty profession, on the technical mistakes of the Department of Defense and, mainly, one computer manufacturer. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity, of mastering multitude and avoiding its bastard chaos as effectively as possible. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
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. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
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. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
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! View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
It is time to unmask the computing community as a Secret Society for the Creation and Preservation of Artificial Complexity. (Edsger W. Dijkstra)
Using PL/1 must be like flying a plane with 7000 buttons, switches and handles to manipulate in the cockpit. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
Perfecting oneself is as much unlearning as it is learning. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
Don't compete with me: firstly, I have more experience, and secondly, I have chosen the weapons. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
Teaching to unsuspecting youngsters the effective use of formal methods is one of the joys of life because it is so extremely rewarding. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
The ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
Many mathematicians derive part of their self-esteem by feeling themselves the proud heirs of a long tradition of rational thinking; I am afraid they idealize their cultural ancestors. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
Program testing can be a very effective way to show the presence of bugs, but it is hopelessly inadequate for showing their absence. (Edsger W. Dijkstra)
The lurking suspicion that something could be simplified is the world's richest source of rewarding challenges. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
Mathematicians are like managers - they want improvement without change. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
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. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
Why has elegance found so little following? That is the reality of it. Elegance has the disadvantage, if that's what it is, that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra