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TIL Dijkstra died in 2002. I don't know why, but I always thought he was much older than that!
by shocks 7y ago
TIL Dijkstra died in 2002. I don't know why, but I always thought he was much older than that!
- hombre_fatal 7y agoProbably because he's cited with the frequency, authority, and timelessness of any major philosopher.
- Stratoscope 7y agoIt's amusing to note that Dijkstra's most famous quote is something he never wrote. Dijkstra submitted a letter to the editor of the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (CACM) that he titled "A Case Against the Goto Statement". Niklaus Wirth was editor of CACM at the time, and he changed the title to the infamous "Go To Statement Considered Harmful". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful Here's the story in Dijkstra's own hand (scroll to the last page of the PDF): http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd13xx/EWD1308.PDF http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd13xx/EWD1308.PDF This is a good reminder that when you read an article with a clickbaity title, don't blame the author, blame the editor.
- masklinn 7y agoOur field is a young one, the "founding generation" (those which actually got computing up and running in the 50s and 60s) only started really dying of age in the 90s (Hopper, Hamming) , though it's getting pretty relentless as the early generations are now reaching their 80s and 90s (McCarthy died in 2011, Engelbart in 2013, Minsky in 2016): Hoare and Wirth are 85, Hamilton is 82, Liskov is 79, Alan Kay and Leslie Lamport are 78, Vint Cerf is 75, …