"A most important, but also most elusive, aspect……" — Edsger Dijkstra
"A most important, but also most elusive, aspect of any tool is its influence on the habits of those who train themselves in its use. If the tool is a programming language this influence is, whether we like it or not, an influence on our thinking habits.... A programming language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits."
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Edsger Dijkstra
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73 Quotes by Edsger Dijkstra
Edsger Dijkstra has 73 quotes on this site.
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The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.
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Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.
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If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
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Why has elegance found so little following? That is the reality of it. Elegance has the disadvantage, if that's what…
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I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I…
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APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection.
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Lisp has jokingly been called "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer". I think that description is a great…
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The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can…
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Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable…
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In the good old days physicists repeated each other's experiments, just to be sure. Today they stick to FORTRAN, so…
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The tools we use have a profound and devious influence on our thinking habits, and therefore on our thinking abilities.
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We shall do a much better programming job, provided that we approach the task with a full appreciation of its…
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