Edsger Dijkstra

The prisoner falls in love with his chains.

— Edsger Dijkstra

Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.

— Edsger Dijkstra

Beauty is our business.

— Edsger Dijkstra

Brainpower is by far our scarcest resource.

— Edsger Dijkstra

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.

— Edsger Dijkstra

Programming in Basic causes brain damage.

— Edsger Dijkstra

Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!

— Edsger Dijkstra

PL/1, the fatal disease, belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.

— Edsger Dijkstra

Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs.

— Edsger Dijkstra

Experience does by no means automatically leads to wisdom and understanding.

— Edsger Dijkstra

We must be very careful when we give advice to younger people: sometimes they follow it!

— Edsger Dijkstra

When building sand castles on the beach, we can ignore the waves but should watch the tide.

— Edsger Dijkstra

Mathematicians are like managers - they want improvement without change.

— Edsger Dijkstra

Teaching COBOL ought to be regarded as a criminal act.

— Edsger Dijkstra

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

— Edsger Dijkstra

Much of the excitement we get out of our work is that we don't really know what we are doing.

— Edsger Dijkstra

APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past:…

— Edsger Dijkstra

The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely…

— Edsger Dijkstra

Probably I am very naive, but I also think I prefer to remain so, at least for the time being and perhaps…

— Edsger Dijkstra

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

— Edsger Dijkstra

The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.

— Edsger Dijkstra

About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try…

— Edsger Dijkstra

[Though computer science is a fairly new discipline, it is predominantly based on the Cartesian world view. As Edsgar W. Dijkstra has…

— Edsger Dijkstra

We shall do a much better programming job, provided that we approach the task with a full appreciation of its tremendous difficulty,…

— Edsger Dijkstra

When we take the position that it is not only the programmer's responsibility to produce a correct program but also to demonstrate…

— Edsger Dijkstra

We are all shaped by the tools we use, in particular: the formalisms we use shape our thinking habits, for better or…

— Edsger Dijkstra

Why has elegance found so little following? That is the reality of it. Elegance has the disadvantage, if that's what it is,…

— Edsger Dijkstra

Some consider the puzzles that are created by their omissions as spicy challenges, without which their texts would be boring; others shun…

— Edsger Dijkstra

If in physics there's something you don't understand, you can always hide behind the uncharted depths of nature. You can always blame…

— Edsger Dijkstra

... as a slow-witted human being I have a very small head and I had better learn to live with it and…

— Edsger Dijkstra

When I came back from Munich, it was September, and I was Professor of Mathematics at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Later…

— Edsger Dijkstra

...Simplifications have had a much greater long-range scientific impact than individual feats of ingenuity. The opportunity for simplification is very encouraging, because…

— Edsger Dijkstra

So-called "natural language" is wonderful for the purposes it was created for, such as to be rude in, to tell jokes in,…

— Edsger Dijkstra

In the wake of the Cultural Revolution and now of the recession I observe a mounting pressure to co-operate and to promote…

— Edsger Dijkstra

Yes, I share your concern: how to program well -though a teachable topic- is hardly taught. The situation is similar to that…

— Edsger Dijkstra

… what society overwhelmingly asks for is snake oil. Of course, the snake oil has the most impressive names — otherwise you…

— Edsger Dijkstra

In this respect a program is like a poem: you cannot write a poem without writing it. Yet people talk about programming…

— Edsger Dijkstra

...our intellectual powers are rather geared to master static relations and that our powers to visualize processes evolving in time are relatively…

— Edsger Dijkstra

Computer science has as much to do with computers as astronomy has to do with telescopes.

— Edsger Dijkstra

The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity.

— Edsger Dijkstra