Letters between Backus and Dijkstra (1979)

>"Now it is important to note I have no idea what I'm talking about. This took literally 30 seconds to come up with."

I think you have some great ideas.

>"So why hasn't something radically better already been done?...In addition to this you'd have to make the general public aware of how bad their healthcare really is."

Maybe at this point the consequences would be worse than the current problem, at least in the short term.

This quote keeps on showing up out of context. Edsger and I got along quite well. He loved to be the way he was and pushed it. His friend Bob Barton (the great genius of the B5000 design) was very similar in loving to push buttons and being very critical of the not-quite-a-field that we have. When the U of Utah faculty complained to Dave Evans about Barton, Evans said "We don't care if they're prima donnas as long as they can sing!" This was a general attitude back then. Dijkstra was much more funny than annoying for anyone who had any sense of self. The two biggest problems in our not-quite-a-field were those who listened to him too carefully and those who didn't listen to him carefully enough. In any case, in the research and faculty worlds of the 60s -- where the funding from ARPA was very very different than funding is today -- consensus was not very important: really capable people explored without worrying so much about what others thought (this is hard to explain to people who've grown up in the intensely social and identity seeking world of the last 20 years or so). His comment about OOP (a rather different kind of thing at Xerox PARC than what the term means today) did not bother any of us at all -- it was rather a compliment even (which was also not a big deal) for those of us who liked the way California worked in the 70s. His comments helped when they helped, and they mattered not at all when they didn't.

It happened with my father's birth I think. He was the oldest of seven children like typical Catholic families of the time. As a child I knew she walked kind of funny but I put it down to her being an old lady (she wasn't but to a child's eyes it's different). As with something you're familiar with you don't question it. Later my father joined a cult and developed an acrimonious relationship with my grandfather who believed the cult was trying to steal his property and so he disinherited my father. We moved away while I was still very young and so I didn't see my grandmother for a time. In my late teens my father and grandfather became more friendly and we visited occasionally.

My grandmother was becoming ill, first diabetes, then Alzheimers. Around this time I learned from my mother than the doctors in the Bons (as we called the Cork Hospital) had performed a Symphysiotomy. My mother described it as a butcher shop involving hacking and sawing. I think a radio show prompted her outburst on the topic, although she and my grandmother didn't get along she obviously felt deep revulsion about the affair. As with most of the women I don't think they asked for permission, they just wheeled them into surgery. I think what galled my grandparents the most is that they perceived the Bons to be a much superior hospital to all the others. It was private. It had reputable doctors. It was Catholic. They were farmers so this would have been a considered expense for them. I'm confident they didn't want to talk about it, it was probably too much.

In this diagram on the wiki you can see what happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphysiotomy#/media/File:Skel...

The part marked '5' was severed using something like a wood saw or circular saw. Saying they broke the pelvis isn't an exaggeration.

The accounts from the wiki are grotesque. Catherine McKeever, a private patient at the Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda in 1969, told the Committee that she did not realise what had happened: 'I saw him [the doctor] with an instrument which I thought was a bit brace because my father was a wood turner. I felt a crack … Nobody answered me or said anything'. Margaret Conlan, who was operated upon in 1962 in St Finbarr's Hospital, Cork, testified that she had never been told anything about it: 'My baby’s head was perforated and the baby died… I did not find out [about the symphysiotomy] until I read it in the newspaper'.

It seems the practice was done to encourage more children. I'm not familiar with Catholic dogma so I don't understand why doctors would foist on their patients. Today I wonder today how the Muslim and African doctors are getting away with FGM in Irish and English hospitals, so in a way the barbarism continues. Don't trust religious fanatics or doctors and especially not both.

The problem is that they both tend to come well dressed and respected by their communities. Taking them down makes you the bad guy, not them.

Also, why would he say that when he knew, very well, that OOP was invented in Norway?

http://coldcomfortgames.com/blog/object-oriented-programming...

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Dijkstra-say-that-%E2%80%9CObj...

It seems no one is able to find the source of the quote, it's in fact much more likely he did not say anything like that, and that the quote is a fabrication.

You're right that the technical rebuttals are fairly slim, but the rest of the exchange, which is all about political play and saving face[0], isn't pointless.

The whole argument Dijkstra makes boils down to "if everyone was as technically competent as you and I, then I wouldn't need to do this. But the sad truth is that the incompetent are not only the majority, they decide what gets funded and researched, so I have to." I think he is right about that, and probably even acted correctly on it, but even so: positioning himself like he's taking on a sacrificial trollish saviour role and just doing this to save programming research is pretty arrogant, so Backus is right as well!

And that's just the politics of it, saving public face hasn't even entered the equation here. Don't forget, Backus' reputation also directly affects the respect and by extension funding that he receives for research that he wants to do. With that in mind I can very easily see how Backus must have been furious after reading EWD692, especially considering that it contained a few insinuations about him, which again I would partially account to Dutch culture, which (used to) have a severe case of tall poppy syndrome[1]. But from Backus' point of view, if they had been friends and colleagues before, it might have felt like backstabbing, both politically and as friends.

So I think I understand Backus' ad hominems - I suspect he was sincere about trying to criticise Dijkstra from the position as a long-time friend; his writing style boiling down to: "Look, I respect you and all, but I have to point out that you're being a dick; oh and have a taste of your own medicine on the side, because two can play that game."

Of course, it looks like he played right into the hands of Dijkstra, because Dijkstra doesn't appear to be as emotionally invested in saving public face, and seems to rather enjoy puzzling Backus a bit longer.

In general, I think it speaks for both of them that they managed to resolve these differences to what appears to be mutual satisfaction!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome