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Edsger Dijkstra carried computer science on his shoulders (2020)

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Re: Edsger Dijkstra carried computer science on his shoulders (2020)

#51

Post by cyco130 »

amiga386 wrote: post #33
rcbdev wrote: post #16

Dijkstra is a wonderful source of memorable quotes and hot takes from the early days of software. A sampling: > “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.” (Dijkstra, 1972) > “The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.” (Dijkstra…

He's the GOAT of hot takes. His critique of the GOTO statement in a 1968 letter to the ACM, which they retitled "Go-to statement considered harmful", is one of the best remembered critiques in programming history. The phrase "considered harmful" has become a meme and is the go-to phrase (pun intended) for essayists looking to criticise some aspect of computing https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd02xx/EWD215.PDF ht…

An the person who changed the title, inventing the now iconic trope "considered harmful" was none other than recently deceased Niklaus Wirth.

Re: Edsger Dijkstra carried computer science on his shoulders (2020)

#52

Post by throwawaaarrgh »

dsco wrote: post #27
rstuart4133 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's a computer scientist speaking to other computer scientists, so I'd say he's talking about relevancy to computer science. But I think perhaps you've missed his subtle use of language. Fish swim, obviously. What submarines do in water isn't usually described a swimming. That's a bit odd in when you think about it as in both cases the objective is to get from A to B, while in the water. In fact if you look at only…

See what's strange here is that we would call a dancing robot "dancing", and not think twice about it.

We do have a dance called 'the robot'

Re: Edsger Dijkstra carried computer science on his shoulders (2020)

#53

Post by hardasspunk »

Just read a few of these EWDs. Some of my favorite quotes I read came from the end of these reports.

> The question of whether a machine can think is the same as the question of whether a submarine can swim.

> In this respect the programmer does not differ from any other craftsman: unless he loves his tools it is highly improbable that he will ever create something of superior quality.

The article is very well written and is full of insights into Dijkstra's thought process.

Looking forward to reading more EWDs.

Re: Edsger Dijkstra carried computer science on his shoulders (2020)

#54

Post by hardasspunk »

archixe wrote: post #43

> "Whether written using a fountain pen or typewriter, Dijkstra’s technical reports were composed at a speed of around three words per minute. “The rest of the time,” he remarked, “is taken up by thinking.”9 For Dijkstra, writing and thinking blended into one activity. When preparing a new EWD, he always sought to produce the final version from the outset." > "He also never purchased a computer. Eventually, in the la…

3 WPM really shook me as well. Today we complain about not having enough time to work on our projects, but back in the good old days, as successful as Dijkstra was, got time to spend 3 WPM and still produced close to 7k articles! Astonishing.

Re: Edsger Dijkstra carried computer science on his shoulders (2020)

#55

Post by rcbdev »

Rochus wrote: post #39
rcbdev wrote: post #16

Dijkstra is a wonderful source of memorable quotes and hot takes from the early days of software. A sampling: > “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.” (Dijkstra, 1972) > “The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.” (Dijkstra…

> “ Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California. ” Not sure what he meant by "object-oriented", but he - as the other members of the IFIP - was well aware of Simula 67, and he belonged to the faction that rejected van Wijngaarden's proposal and regarded Simula 67 as "a more fruitful development" [1]. So - if he said or wrote that at all - it's likely related…

> if he said or wrote that at all

See “TUG LINES”, Issue 32 [1]

> it's likely related to what Kay understood by the term, or the implementation as a dynamically typed, originally interpreted language done at Xerox PARC

I think the comment was referring to what they were doing at Xerox PARC - yes.

There are more recent writings of him taking jabs at Californian universities for teaching Java to freshmen instead of what he was doing in Austin - teaching functional programming via Haskell. [2]

[1] Dijkstra, E.W. Quoted by Bob Crawford. TUG lines, Journal of the Turbo User Group, 32, Aug.–Sep. (1989)

[2] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/OtherDocs/To%20the%20Bud... (2001)

Re: Edsger Dijkstra carried computer science on his shoulders (2020)

#56

Post by throwawaaarrgh »

rstuart4133 wrote: post #25
Almondsetat wrote: post #8

I recently realized, after talking to a friend of mine who studied Dijkstra's works, that for as much as he was interested in writing correct programs his "Structured Programming" approach makes absolutely zero guarantees on correctess or even verifiability. A program written in a structured way is not inherently more correct nor easier to automatically check for bugs.

> his "Structured Programming" approach makes absolutely zero guarantees on correctess or even verifiability That was never the claim. The claim was humans using "Structured programming" produced code with less bugs than humans using other methods. "Humans" being the key word here, a compiler will happily produce perfect programs every time just using goto's (because there is no choice in assembler). But when humans…

To add to that: a "correct and verifiable" program isn't necessarily better. If I decided to make food using chemistry which is "correct and verifiable" as being the healthiest food in the world, it would probably taste terrible.

Re: Edsger Dijkstra carried computer science on his shoulders (2020)

#57

Post by leereeves »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #45
personalityson wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironclad deduction and logic " a) 2 ≤ i b) 1 c) 2 ≤ i ≤ 12 d) 1 There is a smallest natural number. Exclusion of the lower bound —as in b) and d)— forces for a subsequence starting at the smallest natural number the lower bound as mentioned into the realm of the unnatural numbers. That is ugly, so for the lower bound we prefer the ≤ as in a) and c). Consider now the subsequences starting at the smallest natural numbe…

Why? Seems completely correct and good. You either have an empty range be -1 .. 0, which is ugly, or 0 .. -1, which is also ugly. Thus, start-inclusive, end-exclusive.

1 And then, once you remove empty ranges, there's no reason to to choose a range style based on which you prefer for an empty range.

Re: Edsger Dijkstra carried computer science on his shoulders (2020)

#58

Post by Rochus »

rcbdev wrote: post #55
Rochus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “ Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California. ” Not sure what he meant by "object-oriented", but he - as the other members of the IFIP - was well aware of Simula 67, and he belonged to the faction that rejected van Wijngaarden's proposal and regarded Simula 67 as "a more fruitful development" [1]. So - if he said or wrote that at all - it's likely related…

> if he said or wrote that at all See “TUG LINES”, Issue 32 [1] > it's likely related to what Kay understood by the term, or the implementation as a dynamically typed, originally interpreted language done at Xerox PARC I think the comment was referring to what they were doing at Xerox PARC - yes. There are more recent writings of him taking jabs at Californian universities for teaching Java to freshmen instead of wha…

Thanks for the references.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to find [1] anywhere on the web; the CHM only seems to have issues up to 22. Do you have a link where I can access it?

The other one [2] is also interesting, but the claim is not against OO, but "that functional programs are much more readily appreciated as mathematical objects than imperative ones, so that you can teach what rigorous reasoning about programs amounts to", and that "Java [..] is a mess", which again applies to the language quality (see also Brinch Hansen's paper https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/312009.312034), not the paradigm.

Re: Edsger Dijkstra carried computer science on his shoulders (2020)

#59

Post by [deleted] »

avianlyric wrote: post #37
Poliorcetes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whats wrong with object oriented programming?

Most real world problems don’t fit into neatly into hierarchical structures. OOP pushes you towards trying to model everything in the world an objects with strictly defined operations that can be performed on, where those actions are determined by the data type itself. You end up being forced to co-mingle your data structure design, with your data processing design. Which tends to be rather unhelpful. Keeping your da…

[deleted]

Re: Edsger Dijkstra carried computer science on his shoulders (2020)

#60

Post by glimshe »

amiga386 wrote: post #33
rcbdev wrote: post #16

Dijkstra is a wonderful source of memorable quotes and hot takes from the early days of software. A sampling: > “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.” (Dijkstra, 1972) > “The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.” (Dijkstra…

He's the GOAT of hot takes. His critique of the GOTO statement in a 1968 letter to the ACM, which they retitled "Go-to statement considered harmful", is one of the best remembered critiques in programming history. The phrase "considered harmful" has become a meme and is the go-to phrase (pun intended) for essayists looking to criticise some aspect of computing https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd02xx/EWD215.PDF ht…

One of the best remembered, and which led to harmful prejudice against BASIC. While the foundation of the criticism makes sense, it led to silly notions as "there is never a case where GOTOs are useful" and "people who start with BASIC are broken programmers forever"
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