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"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilate

by asnyder 17y ago

"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

nocman 17y ago
It is always amazing to me how much of a mix Dijkstra was. Many of the hand-written articles of his I read are filled with valuable insights, and are absolutely worth the read. And then there's those other sets of comments (like this one) that make me want to pay no attention to anything he had to say. Of course, this is the guy who said "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." And while I believe I understand his point he was trying to make, I have much higher respect for a person who still likes to get their hands dirty (still actually spends significant time programming computers) rather than just dealing with abstract theory, algorithms, analysis, etc. Yes, I know that Dijkstra knew how to program (and did so, extensively, especially earlier in his career). But this is the guy who never owned his own computer -- even after personal computers became commonplace. That, coupled with the above comment about BASIC (and other comments I've read from him like it) make him come across as kind of an elitist -- like programming is beneath him or something. Perhaps my take is wrong, and it very well could be. But I will say this. If Dijkstra was still alive and well, and you put him, Guy Steele, and Don Knuth in a room and asked me to pick two of the three to spend the day with, Dijkstra would be the one left out in the cold.
- andreyf 17y ago
  If Dijkstra was still alive and well, and you put him... No harm, Dijkstra never struck me as the kind of person that would want to spend a day in a room with anyone, either. Computer Science is about studying the computation which can be done in hardware - not just Python, not just on one chipset, not just on a von Neuman machine, but in general. "Programming" as I think you mean it is a very small subset of that.
  - nocman 17y ago
    I was not arguing that programming is all there is to Computer Science (which is why I said I understood the point Dijkstra was making with his astronomy quote). However, I disagree with the notion that programming is "a very small subset" of Computer Science -- even though I think Dijkstra would probably agree with you on that. I think programming is a large subset of Computer Science. Yeah, there's a lot more to it than that, but in my book the practical side of things is more important than Dijkstra seemed to think it was. He was obviously brilliant and very perceptive with regard to many things in the field. However I still think it is over the top that the guy didn't even own a computer. There are many who would rather spend their careers just writing applications without ever analyzing the differences between two algorithms, much less ever studying or thinking about computation in general. Then there are those who would spend their careers strictly on theoretical endeavors, and do not wish to continue writing applications or software systems of significant value. It is my personal opinion that the best Computer Scientists are the ones that regularly do both.
- cabalamat 17y ago
  > If Dijkstra was still alive and well, and you put him, Guy Steele, and Don Knuth in a room and asked me to pick two of the three to spend the day with Or -- and more relevant to their professional competence -- to develop a large, complex and safety-critical system, such as air traffic control; I wouldn't choose Dijkstra over Knuth or Steele for that job either.
  - jpendry 17y ago
    you realize you're saying you wouldn't choose the guy that _invented_ semaphores right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_(programming) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_(programming)
    - jeffcoat 17y ago
      I think that's the point, yes. In software engineering, quantity has a quality all its own.
julius_geezer 17y ago
Dijkstra had an unfortunate fondness for the epigram. Cumulatively the epigrams have had the effect of making it easier to remember him as the guy who said bad things about GOTOs, Basic, Fortran, and OS-360, rather than as a pioneer in algorithms, concurrency, and programming languages. Still, I suppose it is something to be able to say pithy things in one's second (or at least not first) language.

by asnyder 17y ago

nocman 17y ago

It is always amazing to me how much of a mix Dijkstra was. Many of the hand-written articles of his I read are filled with valuable insights, and are absolutely worth the read. And then there's those other sets of comments (like this one) that make me want to pay no attention to anything he had to say. Of course, this is the guy who said "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." And while I believe I understand his point he was trying to make, I have much higher respect for a person who still likes to get their hands dirty (still actually spends significant time programming computers) rather than just dealing with abstract theory, algorithms, analysis, etc. Yes, I know that Dijkstra knew how to program (and did so, extensively, especially earlier in his career). But this is the guy who never owned his own computer -- even after personal computers became commonplace. That, coupled with the above comment about BASIC (and other comments I've read from him like it) make him come across as kind of an elitist -- like programming is beneath him or something. Perhaps my take is wrong, and it very well could be. But I will say this. If Dijkstra was still alive and well, and you put him, Guy Steele, and Don Knuth in a room and asked me to pick two of the three to spend the day with, Dijkstra would be the one left out in the cold.

andreyf 17y ago
If Dijkstra was still alive and well, and you put him... No harm, Dijkstra never struck me as the kind of person that would want to spend a day in a room with anyone, either. Computer Science is about studying the computation which can be done in hardware - not just Python, not just on one chipset, not just on a von Neuman machine, but in general. "Programming" as I think you mean it is a very small subset of that.
- nocman 17y ago
  I was not arguing that programming is all there is to Computer Science (which is why I said I understood the point Dijkstra was making with his astronomy quote). However, I disagree with the notion that programming is "a very small subset" of Computer Science -- even though I think Dijkstra would probably agree with you on that. I think programming is a large subset of Computer Science. Yeah, there's a lot more to it than that, but in my book the practical side of things is more important than Dijkstra seemed to think it was. He was obviously brilliant and very perceptive with regard to many things in the field. However I still think it is over the top that the guy didn't even own a computer. There are many who would rather spend their careers just writing applications without ever analyzing the differences between two algorithms, much less ever studying or thinking about computation in general. Then there are those who would spend their careers strictly on theoretical endeavors, and do not wish to continue writing applications or software systems of significant value. It is my personal opinion that the best Computer Scientists are the ones that regularly do both.
cabalamat 17y ago
> If Dijkstra was still alive and well, and you put him, Guy Steele, and Don Knuth in a room and asked me to pick two of the three to spend the day with Or -- and more relevant to their professional competence -- to develop a large, complex and safety-critical system, such as air traffic control; I wouldn't choose Dijkstra over Knuth or Steele for that job either.
- jpendry 17y ago
  you realize you're saying you wouldn't choose the guy that _invented_ semaphores right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_(programming) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_(programming)
  - jeffcoat 17y ago
    I think that's the point, yes. In software engineering, quantity has a quality all its own.

julius_geezer 17y ago

Dijkstra had an unfortunate fondness for the epigram. Cumulatively the epigrams have had the effect of making it easier to remember him as the guy who said bad things about GOTOs, Basic, Fortran, and OS-360, rather than as a pioneer in algorithms, concurrency, and programming languages. Still, I suppose it is something to be able to say pithy things in one's second (or at least not first) language.