Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective
Edsger W. Dijkstra, Springer-Verlag 1982, PSU QA76.24.D54 1982
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Many of the algorithms and methods are presented as (pseudo)code, which concatenates operations with semicolons and appears to use indents as flow control - perhaps. I did not take time to specifically understand them, beyond accepting without proof that structure can improve correctness.
- p49 William Blake "He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer. For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized particulars.
- p66 Strachey 1969: "I am quite convinced that computing will become a very important science. But at the moment we are in a very primitive state of development; we don't know the basic principles yet and we must learn them first. If universities spend their time teaching the state of the art, they will not discover these principles and that, surely, is what academics should be doing."
p97 guarded commands example
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promela is an example, Linux implementation available
p97 "awful properties of the CDC-machine they have to use
p100 Riemann hypothesis
- p125 ... triangle "university-manufacturer-customer" ...
p125 companion volume to Arthur Koestler's The Call Girls
p127 C.A.R. (Tony) Hoare "Simplicity is the price we must pay for reliability"
- p127 It is no longer "logical spaghetti", but "logical barbed wire".
- p127 "Why is everyone so damned pessimistic?" "Because all of us have heard this morning's keynote address"
- p128 make your system meet the requirements - and during that phase it is wise to consider yourself the user - and if the system's customer happens to be someone else than yourself, deal with the problem of discovering his needs and intentions as a separate issue.
p128 Wlad Turski "They don't want computer scientists, nor software engineers, they want brainwashed mental cripples.
- p129 EWD498 How Do We Tell Truths that Might Hurt?
- Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer programmers had better remain pure mathematicians.
- p130 About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vane to do it with ten blunt axes instead.
p161 EDW512 Eric Temple Bell complaining about the watering down of the American high school, where mediocrity has become the norm, a degradation covered by a misuse of the notion "democratic".
p161 Courant's introduction to Morris Kline's Mathematics in Western Culture
- p162 "Computers and the ill-trained mob"
p163 programming -> intellectual discipline that can be taught and studied and that need no longer be based on the technical mistakes of the department of defence and the computer manufacturers.
p167 F. J. M. Laver
- p168 English higher education has become big business ... (not) the insights to be taught ... which forms of colored water can be poured into a glass as if it were wine.
p168 the "msi" - milli-split-infinitive - as the practical init of linguistic irritation
p175 EWD538 A Collection of Beautiful Proofs
- p330 EWD627: If, however, you offer a shaky, would-be solution to an urgent problem, you do indeed harm to the world, which, in view of the urgency of the problem, will only be too willing to apply your ineffective remedy. It is no wonder that charlatanry always flourishes in connection with incurable diseases.