4 ms·

Warning: this article is by Dijkstra. You may remember him as the person after whom the unit of arrogance, the nanoDijkstra, is named.

tajen 11y ago
Omg you're right: http://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=20+nanodijkstra http://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=20+nanodijkstra
- ak39 11y ago
  Probably originally attributed to Alan Kay: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Edsger_W._Dijkstra https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Edsger_W._Dijkstra Quote: I found an amusing quote from Alan Kay on Dijkstra, from his 1997 OOPSLA keynote: 'I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.' [audience laughter][1]. --24.184.131.16 20:06, 16 March 2008 (UTC) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xoyw8LHGtzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xoyw8LHGtzk
  - spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
    I used to work at BT with a (very good) DBA who's first boss was Dijkstra
- myhf 11y ago
  Hmm, for some reason it won't let me convert Stephen Wolfram to nanoDijkstras.
  - jhdevos 11y ago
    Integer overflow?
    - gjm11 11y ago
      Unlikely; Wolfram Alpha is based on Mathematica, which has arbitrary-precision integers, and I don't think one wolfram can be more than about 10^12 nano-dijkstras. (If I put "1 wolfram" into Alpha then it tells me about Stephen Wolfram. If I put "2 wolfram" into Alpha it tells me about tungsten. I guess that when you ask it for "1 whatever", it first simplifies it to "whatever", and then you can have variable quantities of tungsten but not of Stephen Wolfram.)
      - nnq 11y ago
        Wolfram is also another name for the chemical element "tungsten" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_(element) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_(element) ("2 wolfram" probably means "give me the second meaning of 'wolfram'"). Mathematica/WolframAlpha is probably not smart enough to figure out unambiguously how much mass or energy could be in one nano-dijkstra, which it would need for such a conversion. On the other hand, referring to "1 wolfram", some would argue that one wolfram could greatly exceed 10^12 nano-dijkstras... Dijkstra was actually quite smart and from reading his essays, I'd consider him quite humble, not arrogant at all. He had that "old-noble-European cold-joking-seriousness" and most Americans are known to be incapable of understanding this tone of communication.
emirozer 11y ago
Dutch directness has a side effect of coming across as arrogant, its merely a difference in culture[0]. For example, if you are Dutch and your friends are Dutch, you don't go on and ask "how are you?" to the people that aren't close to you. The question "how are you?" is actually there for you to show genuine interest in someone else's life at that moment. The polar opposite of it is the US version i guess, where a "how are you?" results almost always with a "fine and you?". On another note, i think the main reason(i might be very wrong here) that they had this clash is Alan Kay being a pioneer in object oriented programming. And Dijkstra's counter-discourses against it and sometimes those discourses were harsh[1]. (Although we can agree oop is garbage :D, that is certainly not the best way to put it.) [0]: Although i have met some Dutch people that were being rude and trying to cover it with "Directness" http://www.iamexpat.nl/read-and-discuss/expat-page/articles/perks-of-dutch-directness http://www.iamexpat.nl/read-and-discuss/expat-page/articles/... [1]: http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/OO_programming/ http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/OO_programming/
- nnq 11y ago
  > Although we can agree oop is garbage :D Can we? The stuff that Alan Kay put forward in Smalltalk, with message-passing, polymorphism, late binding etc.... was definitely NOT garbage imho! What C++ an Java and all the all the languages that tried to copy them, and also Javascript with its prototypal inheritance ended up with... it stinks indeed. But where Scala on one side, and Go and Rust on the other are going... that will be interesting at least :) Maybe Odersky is on to something with his whole "functional and oo are orthogonal" thing... though the way macros are implemented in Scala on top of and USING the oo core instead of separate and serving as the foundation for oo (CL style) makes me wanna puke when reading the resulting code...
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    Indeed, OO hatred is usually a sign of an inexperienced functional programmer.
    - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
SZJX 11y ago
Don't know him a lot, but this sounds credible just from this article: > The first effect of teaching a methodology —rather than disseminating knowledge— is that of enhancing the capacities of the already capable, thus magnifying the difference in intelligence. Only an arrogant person would assume his success is down to his being intellectually superior than his peers instead of him enjoying a wealth of resources along the path of growing up and maybe some hard work + luck.

tajen 11y ago

Omg you're right: http://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=20+nanodijkstra http://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=20+nanodijkstra

ak39 11y ago
Probably originally attributed to Alan Kay: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Edsger_W._Dijkstra https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Edsger_W._Dijkstra Quote: I found an amusing quote from Alan Kay on Dijkstra, from his 1997 OOPSLA keynote: 'I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.' [audience laughter][1]. --24.184.131.16 20:06, 16 March 2008 (UTC) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xoyw8LHGtzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xoyw8LHGtzk
- spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
  I used to work at BT with a (very good) DBA who's first boss was Dijkstra
myhf 11y ago
Hmm, for some reason it won't let me convert Stephen Wolfram to nanoDijkstras.
- jhdevos 11y ago
  Integer overflow?
  - gjm11 11y ago
    Unlikely; Wolfram Alpha is based on Mathematica, which has arbitrary-precision integers, and I don't think one wolfram can be more than about 10^12 nano-dijkstras. (If I put "1 wolfram" into Alpha then it tells me about Stephen Wolfram. If I put "2 wolfram" into Alpha it tells me about tungsten. I guess that when you ask it for "1 whatever", it first simplifies it to "whatever", and then you can have variable quantities of tungsten but not of Stephen Wolfram.)
    - nnq 11y ago
      Wolfram is also another name for the chemical element "tungsten" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_(element) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_(element) ("2 wolfram" probably means "give me the second meaning of 'wolfram'"). Mathematica/WolframAlpha is probably not smart enough to figure out unambiguously how much mass or energy could be in one nano-dijkstra, which it would need for such a conversion. On the other hand, referring to "1 wolfram", some would argue that one wolfram could greatly exceed 10^12 nano-dijkstras... Dijkstra was actually quite smart and from reading his essays, I'd consider him quite humble, not arrogant at all. He had that "old-noble-European cold-joking-seriousness" and most Americans are known to be incapable of understanding this tone of communication.

emirozer 11y ago

Dutch directness has a side effect of coming across as arrogant, its merely a difference in culture[0]. For example, if you are Dutch and your friends are Dutch, you don't go on and ask "how are you?" to the people that aren't close to you. The question "how are you?" is actually there for you to show genuine interest in someone else's life at that moment. The polar opposite of it is the US version i guess, where a "how are you?" results almost always with a "fine and you?". On another note, i think the main reason(i might be very wrong here) that they had this clash is Alan Kay being a pioneer in object oriented programming. And Dijkstra's counter-discourses against it and sometimes those discourses were harsh[1]. (Although we can agree oop is garbage :D, that is certainly not the best way to put it.) [0]: Although i have met some Dutch people that were being rude and trying to cover it with "Directness" http://www.iamexpat.nl/read-and-discuss/expat-page/articles/perks-of-dutch-directness http://www.iamexpat.nl/read-and-discuss/expat-page/articles/... [1]: http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/OO_programming/ http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/OO_programming/

nnq 11y ago
> Although we can agree oop is garbage :D Can we? The stuff that Alan Kay put forward in Smalltalk, with message-passing, polymorphism, late binding etc.... was definitely NOT garbage imho! What C++ an Java and all the all the languages that tried to copy them, and also Javascript with its prototypal inheritance ended up with... it stinks indeed. But where Scala on one side, and Go and Rust on the other are going... that will be interesting at least :) Maybe Odersky is on to something with his whole "functional and oo are orthogonal" thing... though the way macros are implemented in Scala on top of and USING the oo core instead of separate and serving as the foundation for oo (CL style) makes me wanna puke when reading the resulting code...
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Indeed, OO hatred is usually a sign of an inexperienced functional programmer.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago

SZJX 11y ago

Don't know him a lot, but this sounds credible just from this article: > The first effect of teaching a methodology —rather than disseminating knowledge— is that of enhancing the capacities of the already capable, thus magnifying the difference in intelligence. Only an arrogant person would assume his success is down to his being intellectually superior than his peers instead of him enjoying a wealth of resources along the path of growing up and maybe some hard work + luck.