Perfecting oneself is as much unlearning as it is learning.
-- Edsger Dijkstra
⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #EdsgerDijkstra #Improvement
⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Sunset #Kayaks #Everglades #Florida
#EdsgerDijkstra
The tools we use have a profound (and devious) influence on our thinking habits, and, therefore, on our thinking abilities.
-- Edsger Dijkstra
⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #EdsgerDijkstra #Habits #Thought #Tools
⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Pictographs #RockArt #NativeAmerican #Utah
The tools we use have a profound (and devious) influence on our thinking habits, and, therefore, on our thinking abilities.
-- Edsger Dijkstra
“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.” — #EdsgerDijkstra
Welcome to every CS lecture I’ve ever been to. <https://theregister.com/2025/01/03/reevaluating_basics_legacy/>
#ComputingScience #EdsgerDijkstra #Haskell #Education
To the members of the Budget Council (2001)https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/OtherDocs/Haskell.html
I write to you because of a rumour of efforts to replace in the introductory programming course of our undergraduate curriculum the functional language #Haskell by the imperative language #Java, and because I think that in this case the Budget Council has to take responsibility lest the decision be taken at the wrong level.
You see, it is no minor matter. Colleagues from outside the state (still!) often wonder how I can survive in a place like Austin, #Texas, automatically assuming that Texas’s solid conservatism guarantees equally solid mediocrity. My usual answer is something like “Don’t worry. The CS Department is quite an enlightened place, for instance for introductory programming we introduce our freshmen to #Haskell”; they react first almost with disbelief, and then with envy — usually it turns out that their undergraduate curriculum has not recovered from the transition from #Pascal to something like #C++ or #Java.
[…] Finally, in the specific comparison of #Haskell versus #Java, #Haskell, though not perfect, is of a quality that is several orders of magnitude higher than #Java, which is a mess (and needed an extensive advertizing campaign and aggressive salesmanship for its commercial acceptance). It is bad enough that, on the whole, industry accepts designs of well-identified lousiness as “de facto” standards. Personally I think that the University should keep the healthier alternatives alive.
It is not only the violin that shapes the violinist, we are all shaped by the tools we train ourselves to use, and in this respect programming languages have a devious influence: they shape our thinking habits. This circumstance makes the choice of first programming language so important. One would like to use the introductory programming course as a means of creating a culture that can serve as a basis for computing science curriculum, rather than be forced to start that with a lot of unlearning (if that is possible at all: what has become our past, forever remains so).
#ComputingScience #EdsgerDijkstra #EWD898 #ArtificialIntelligence
The Fathers of the field had been pretty confusing: John von Neumann speculated about computers and the human brain in analogies sufficiently wild to be worthy of a medieval thinker and Alan M. Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether Machines Can Think, a question of which we now know that it is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim.
#ComputingScience #EdsgerDijkstra #EWD898
The threats to computing science (1984)
[…] Does this overestimation of the usefulness of the gadget hurt computing science? I fear it does. At the one end of the spectrum it discourages the computing scientist from conducting all sorts of notational experiments because "his word-processor won't allow them", at the other end of the spectrum the art-and-science of program design has been overshadowed by the problems of mechanizing program verification.
The design of new formalisms, more effective because better geared to our manipulative needs, is neglected because the clumsiness of the current ones is the major motivation for the mechanization of their use. It is not only the performing artist who is, in a very real sense, shaped by the instrument he plays; this holds as well for the Reasoning Man, and I leave it to you to determine how disturbed you are going to be by this observation.
I'm totally on board for #EdsgerDijkstra memes. ;)
Perfecting oneself is as much unlearning as it is learning.
-- Edsger Dijkstra
⬆ #Quotes #EdsgerDijkstra #Improvement
⬇ #Photography #Panorama #ChacoCanyon #PuebloBonito #Ruins #360panorama #NewMexico
Unravel how Edsger Dijkstra's structured programming marked a before and after in software creation! 🖥️📈 https://www.developn.net/en/article/history-of-application-development?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social #SoftwareDevelopment #DevCommunity #TechTalk #LearnCoding #CodeNewbie #DeveloperLife #CodingBootcamp #FreelanceDev #ProjectManagement #BestPractices #StructuredProgramming #EdsgerDijkstra
¡Desentraña cómo la programación estructurada de Edsger Dijkstra marcó un antes y un después en la creación de software! 🖥️📈 https://www.developn.net/es/article/historia-del-desarrollo-de-aplicaciones?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social #DesarrolloSoftware #ComunidadDev #TechTalk #AprendeAProgramar #CodeNewbie #DesarrolladorSoftware #CodingBootcamp #FreelanceDev #GestiónProyectos #BuenasPrácticas #ProgramaciónEstructurada #EdsgerDijkstra
Did you know Edsger Dijkstra's structured programming methodology advocated for well-structured and easy-to-understand programs? 🧠💡 https://www.developn.net/en/article/history-of-application-development?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social #SoftwareDevelopment #DevCommunity #TechTalk #LearnCoding #CodeNewbie #DeveloperLife #CodingBootcamp #FreelanceDev #ProjectManagement #BestPractices #StructuredProgramming #EdsgerDijkstra
¿Sabías que la metodología de programación estructurada de Edsger Dijkstra abogaba por programas bien estructurados y fáciles de entender? 🧠💡 https://www.developn.net/es/article/historia-del-desarrollo-de-aplicaciones?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social #DesarrolloSoftware #ComunidadDev #TechTalk #AprendeAProgramar #CodeNewbie #DesarrolladorSoftware #CodingBootcamp #FreelanceDev #GestiónProyectos #BuenasPrácticas #ProgramaciónEstructurada #EdsgerDijkstra
@shipp you’d have to ask #TheDam but I guess they just have fun doing it, besides, people do pay for stuffs a lot more crazy I’m sure you know 🙃
Is the minimal/flawed C code the best actionable way to tackle their stated problem: “almost every widely-distributed piece of software is a complexity behemoth”? Likely not, but that’s a crucial problem nonetheless. I would rather see them embracing #VLSAL (Very Large Scale Application of Logic) as #EdsgerDijkstra once summarized, but #ComputerScience is still young and not teached as much as it should be, though things are improving on that topic.
Useless quote for 11 May:
"Nowadays machines are so fast and stores are so huge that in a very true sense the computations we can evoke defy our imagination. Machine capacities now give us room galore for making a mess of it."
~ Edsger W. Dijkstra, 1984
#EdsgerDijkstra “The Humble Programmer”
“He argues that #programming is the only activity in which humans have to master nine orders of magnitude of difference between the lowest level of detail, and the highest.“ — #CodeComplete #SteveMcConnell, page 771.
The humble programmer": this is one of my favorite lecture by one of my favorite computer scientists, Edsger W. Dijkstra (I'm infinitely grateful to the person who let me discover it some time ago!).
"The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full humility, and among other things he avoids clever tricks like the plague."
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340.html
"a colourful – if sometimes difficult and opinionated – and well-respected man". Dingen die ze alleen over (vroegere) academici zeggen. In dit geval over #edsgerdijkstra
Wow.
"Edsger W. Dijkstra: a Commemoration
This article is a multiauthored portait of Edsger Wybe Dijkstra that consists of testimonials written by several friends, colleagues, and students of his. It provides unique insights into his personality, working style and habits, and his influence on other computer scientists, as a researcher, teacher, and mentor."
PDF at [ https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/commemoration/EWD-commemoration-2021.pdf ]
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