Edsger Wybe Dijkstra Quotes

• Perfecting oneself is as much unlearning as it is learning.

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Learning

• Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Aim, Brevity

• The students that, like the wild animal being prepared for its tricks in the circus called “life”, expects only training as sketched above, will be severely disappointed: by his standards he will learn next to nothing.

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Animal, Training, Hard Work

• 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

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Education

  Tags in Appreciate, Elegance

• 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 Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Humor

  Tags in Immortality

• 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.

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Educator, Mathematician

• 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.

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Competent, Programmer

• 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 Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Mathematician, Tradition

• 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.

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Perfection

  Tags in Fashionable

• APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Programming, Techniques

• 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.

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Programming, Students

• About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Language, Use

• The lurking suspicion that something could be simplified is the world’s richest source of rewarding challenges.

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Challenge

  Tags in Suspicion, Source

• The ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings.

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Ability

  Tags in Quality

• Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Programming, Mathematics

• Don’t compete with me: firstly, I have more experience, and secondly, I have chosen the weapons.

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Experience

  Tags in Weapons

• Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Elegance, Factor

• Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California.

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Programming, Idea, California

• Mathematicians are like managers – they want improvement without change.

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Mathematician

• Teaching to unsuspecting youngsters the effective use of formal methods is one of the joys of life because it is so extremely rewarding.

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Effective, Teaching

Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (26)

Birth:	11th May, 1930
Death:	6th August, 2002
Nationality:	Dutch
Profession:	Computer Scientist

About

Edsger Wybe Dijkstra was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He was a Dutch computer scientist. He was a professor of mathematics at the Eindhoven University of Technology and 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. He was an early theoretical pioneer in many research areas of computing science, including algorithm design, programming methodology, and software architecture. In 1956 he graduated from the Leiden University in mathematics and theoretical physics. In 1959 he received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam.

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