53 quotes
A picture may be worth a thousand words, a formula is worth a thousand pictures.
The teaching of BASIC should be rated as a criminal offence: it mutilates the mind beyond recovery.
Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!
Dijkstra (1970)
The problems of the real world are primarily those you are left with when you refuse to apply their effective solutions.
Dijkstra (1988)
It is not the task of the University to offer what society asks for, but to give what society needs.
Dijkstra (2000)
Thank goodness we don't have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.
Dijkstra (1982)
The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity, of mastering multitude and avoiding its bastard chaos as effectively as possible.
Dijkstra (1970)
May, in spite of all distractions generated by technology, all of you succeed in turning information into knowledge, knowledge into understanding, and understanding into wisdom.
Dijkstra (1998)
Several people have told me that my inability to suffer fools gladly is one of my main weaknesses.
Dijkstra (1978)
Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.
Dijkstra (1984)
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.
How do we tell truths that might hurt? (1975)
We must be very careful when we give advice to younger people: sometimes they follow it!
The Humble Programmer (1972)
The purpose of abstracting is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.
The Humble Programmer (1972)
Program testing can be a very effective way to show the presence of bugs, but it is hopelessly inadequate for showing their absence.
The Humble Programmer (1972)
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.
How do we tell truths that might hurt? (1975)
FORTRAN's tragic fate has been its wide acceptance, mentally chaining thousands and thousands of programmers to our past mistakes.
The Humble Programmer (1972)
The effective exploitation of his powers of abstraction must be regarded as one of the most vital activities of a competent programmer.
The Humble Programmer (1972)
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.
How do we tell truths that might hurt? (1975)
A convincing demonstration of correctness being impossible as long as the mechanism is regarded as a black box, our only hope lies in not regarding the mechanism as a black box.
Dijkstra (1970)
One moral of the above story is, of course, that we must be very careful when we give advice to younger people; sometimes they follow it!
Dijkstra (1972)