4 ms·
On the fact that the Atlantic Ocean has two sides (1982) [pdf]
- Al-Khwarizmi 11y ago24 years later, the description/criticism he makes of the American university culture is accurate for (at least most of) Europe as well. We even have "management science" everywhere.
- Animats 11y agoThat's Djykstra. Programming is too hard for the average programmer. He's probably right, yet work does get done. More or less.
- 3princip 11y agoA fascinating read. > P.S. I apologize for having been so often so apologetic. Made me chuckle.
- ranko 11y agoAlso available in HTML: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD611.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/E...
- elcapitan 11y agoNot advocating Alan Kay's view on Dijkstra here, but his answer to this is still very funny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KivesLMncs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KivesLMncs "You may know that arrogance in computer science is measured in Nano-Dijkstras. [..] I wrote a rebuttal paper just named 'On the fact that most software in the world is written on one side of the Atlantic'."
- david-given 11y agoI hear that in the mathematical world it's measures as milli-Mandelbrots. Why, some people even get as high as three, or occasionally four!
- andrewl 11y agoI like his description of one unfortunate aspect of American culture he discovered on his first visit: "...for the first time in my life I was confronted with a civilization that did not give its scientists the automatic benefit of the doubt or the respect that I was used to. On that trip I learned the word "egg-head" as a truly untranslatable Americanism...I was shocked to see how intellectuals could be-—as it were—-by definition suspect, and I remember that the feeling of uncertainty from which I saw my colleagues suffer, worried me very much."
- throwaway999888 11y agoNationalistic arrogance is measured in Nano-Americans.
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