3 ms·

It's a bit odd to use the word "seduce" there.

the_af 7y ago
Fair enough. It doesn't seem odd to me (one is seduced by dangerous but superficially appealing ideas, and this has little to do with one's sex), and more importantly, look at the whole sentence: > "It was the time of Edmund C. Berkeley’s “Giant Brains or Machines that Think”, it was the time of rampant anthropomorphism that would lead to the false hope of solving the programming problem by the verbosity of COBOL and would seduce Grace M. Hopper to write a paper titled “The Education of a Computer”. Regrettably and amazingly, the habit lingers on: it is quite easy to infuriate computing scientists by pointing out that anthropomorphizing inanimate objects is in science a symptom of professional immaturity." Like another comment here points out, this use of "seduce" is akin to "being seduced by the Dark Side of the Force". Anakin Skywalker was a man! Also, this was Dijkstra's (slightly vitriolic) way of speaking. If you've read other [0] stuff [1] by him [2], you'll instantly recognize his style. And he isn't singling Grace out either; in any case, he seems to refer to her as another computer scientist, sharing the "professional immaturity" with Edmund Berkeley, a man. [0] "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/Go_To_Considered_Harmful.html http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/Go_T... [1] "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science" https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD103... [2] "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense." "FORTRAN, 'the infantile disorder', by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use." "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." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  Good points - I don't think this is a case of egregious sexism or anything. But I think greed can seduce a person, I think power can seduce a person, I think fame can seduce a person. I've never heard of "false hope" or "rampant anthropomorphism" as seductive, though.
adrianmonk 7y ago
Do you think it was odd that in Star Wars, Obi Wan Kenobi said, "Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force"? Is this any different?
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  No - being seduced by power makes sense. Being "seduced to write a book" is odd.
  - adrianmonk 7y ago
    His point is that the term "computer language" lured people into anthropomorphizing the process of creating software. In his mind, writing a book called "The Education of a Computer" is a result of falling into that trap. It isn't the writing of the book he thinks she was lured into. It was the error in thinking that (he believed) the book contained. (Note: I've included a lot of stuff like "he believed" and "his point" to emphasize that I don't really buy his thesis. I'm not in his corner when it comes to the idea he's presenting, but I don't see anything wrong with the words he used to present it.)
neonate 7y ago
By your standards, in 2019. That says nothing about whether it was odd when Dijkstra wrote it. You'd have to compare it to what he and people like him wrote in the past.

Fair enough. It doesn't seem odd to me (one is seduced by dangerous but superficially appealing ideas, and this has little to do with one's sex), and more importantly, look at the whole sentence: > "It was the time of Edmund C. Berkeley’s “Giant Brains or Machines that Think”, it was the time of rampant anthropomorphism that would lead to the false hope of solving the programming problem by the verbosity of COBOL and would seduce Grace M. Hopper to write a paper titled “The Education of a Computer”. Regrettably and amazingly, the habit lingers on: it is quite easy to infuriate computing scientists by pointing out that anthropomorphizing inanimate objects is in science a symptom of professional immaturity." Like another comment here points out, this use of "seduce" is akin to "being seduced by the Dark Side of the Force". Anakin Skywalker was a man! Also, this was Dijkstra's (slightly vitriolic) way of speaking. If you've read other [0] stuff [1] by him [2], you'll instantly recognize his style. And he isn't singling Grace out either; in any case, he seems to refer to her as another computer scientist, sharing the "professional immaturity" with Edmund Berkeley, a man. [0] "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/Go_To_Considered_Harmful.html http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/Go_T... [1] "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science" https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD103... [2] "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense." "FORTRAN, 'the infantile disorder', by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use." "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." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra

oarabbus_ 7y ago
Good points - I don't think this is a case of egregious sexism or anything. But I think greed can seduce a person, I think power can seduce a person, I think fame can seduce a person. I've never heard of "false hope" or "rampant anthropomorphism" as seductive, though.

adrianmonk 7y ago

Do you think it was odd that in Star Wars, Obi Wan Kenobi said, "Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force"? Is this any different?

oarabbus_ 7y ago
No - being seduced by power makes sense. Being "seduced to write a book" is odd.
- adrianmonk 7y ago
  His point is that the term "computer language" lured people into anthropomorphizing the process of creating software. In his mind, writing a book called "The Education of a Computer" is a result of falling into that trap. It isn't the writing of the book he thinks she was lured into. It was the error in thinking that (he believed) the book contained. (Note: I've included a lot of stuff like "he believed" and "his point" to emphasize that I don't really buy his thesis. I'm not in his corner when it comes to the idea he's presenting, but I don't see anything wrong with the words he used to present it.)

neonate 7y ago

By your standards, in 2019. That says nothing about whether it was odd when Dijkstra wrote it. You'd have to compare it to what he and people like him wrote in the past.