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I feel Dijkstra kind of undermines himself with the curmudgeonly "kids these days" remark at the end. Still, he makes a very strong historical argument for a br

I feel Dijkstra kind of undermines himself with the curmudgeonly "kids these days" remark at the end. Still, he makes a very strong historical argument for a broader point than the title suggests--for not being in such a hurry to get rid of formal notation. For some of us, that's preaching to the choir, but I feel like it could be well aimed today at those who think "IT" has no need for "Computer Science".

coldtea 6y ago
>I feel Dijkstra kind of undermines himself with the curmudgeonly "kids these days" remark at the end Not necessarily. The idea that "kids" across generations are always either the same or improving across times and cultural changes is an even bigger cliche than "kids these days". Dijkstra in this, as is made clear from the context, case doesn't even talk about kids (people) in general, but about a specific subset: educated people. So, while more people get an education than ever, and you could find total illiterates in greater masses in e.g. 1900 than when Dijkstra wrote this, there's also a decline in many aspects between a university graduate of 1950 and a graduate of say 2020. Part of this is because in the 1950 university degrees where rarer, and thus more demanding and elite. But it can be true even for graduates from colleges that remain highly selective (Yale/Harvard 1950 vs Yale/Harvard 2020). One example might be a CS degree with C/Assembly or Lisp and SICP vs one with some Java "market-driven" introductions to programming... One makes computer scientists, the other is a glorified job training program...
- rowanG077 6y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure that that 1950 university degrees were more demanding. More rare and elite, definitely. But it wasn't really intelligence or drive that made sure you could go to university. It was whether your social standing allowed it.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    My dad borrowed a couple of my engineer books. He said they had more material and harder problems than his old college books did. Also my instructors said they fretted about trying to figure out what to teach out of the ever growing body of work. When my dad went everyone graduated in four years. When I went was more typical to graduate in 5 to 6 years. And they worried that they wouldn't have enough four year students to meet accreditation requirements. Same time I never heard my professor complain about the poor quality of students.
- goto11 6y ago
  Anyone who didn't learn programming by building microprocessors out of vacuum tubes can obviously never be a real computer scientist.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    No, but anybody who uses a strawman as an argument can clearly never see a finer point...

coldtea 6y ago

>I feel Dijkstra kind of undermines himself with the curmudgeonly "kids these days" remark at the end Not necessarily. The idea that "kids" across generations are always either the same or improving across times and cultural changes is an even bigger cliche than "kids these days". Dijkstra in this, as is made clear from the context, case doesn't even talk about kids (people) in general, but about a specific subset: educated people. So, while more people get an education than ever, and you could find total illiterates in greater masses in e.g. 1900 than when Dijkstra wrote this, there's also a decline in many aspects between a university graduate of 1950 and a graduate of say 2020. Part of this is because in the 1950 university degrees where rarer, and thus more demanding and elite. But it can be true even for graduates from colleges that remain highly selective (Yale/Harvard 1950 vs Yale/Harvard 2020). One example might be a CS degree with C/Assembly or Lisp and SICP vs one with some Java "market-driven" introductions to programming... One makes computer scientists, the other is a glorified job training program...

rowanG077 6y ago
I wouldn't be so sure that that 1950 university degrees were more demanding. More rare and elite, definitely. But it wasn't really intelligence or drive that made sure you could go to university. It was whether your social standing allowed it.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  My dad borrowed a couple of my engineer books. He said they had more material and harder problems than his old college books did. Also my instructors said they fretted about trying to figure out what to teach out of the ever growing body of work. When my dad went everyone graduated in four years. When I went was more typical to graduate in 5 to 6 years. And they worried that they wouldn't have enough four year students to meet accreditation requirements. Same time I never heard my professor complain about the poor quality of students.
goto11 6y ago
Anyone who didn't learn programming by building microprocessors out of vacuum tubes can obviously never be a real computer scientist.
- coldtea 6y ago
  No, but anybody who uses a strawman as an argument can clearly never see a finer point...