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Maybe not one to practice what he preached; as Alan Kay observed, arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-dijkstras.
by grahamlee 5y ago
Maybe not one to practice what he preached; as Alan Kay observed, arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-dijkstras.
- disqard 5y agoIndeed, I was also surprised by the provenance of that quote. See: https://medium.com/@acidflask/this-guys-arrogance-takes-your-breath-away-5b903624ca5f https://medium.com/@acidflask/this-guys-arrogance-takes-your...
- PoignardAzur 5y agoI'm not seeing much evidence of Dijkstra being unbelievably arrogant in those letters. This mostly seems to be two stuck-up academics caught up in sniping (very cordially) at each other over petty academic crap. EDIT: Okay, I've read EWD692 and I get why Backus was pissed now. This still feels a lot milder than people are suggesting.
- grahamlee 5y agoNote that Backus's complaint is in relation to EWD638, where Dijkstra tears apart every claim made in a paper and accuses the authors of having a "pre-scientific attitude" and giving "the impression of anti-intellectualistic reactionaries". But none of this explains why the "provenance" of Alan Kay's statement about Dijkstra's arrogance is supplied in a retelling of Backus's statement about Dijkstra's arrogance. The provenance of Alan Kay's statement is that Alan Kay said it, in his OOPSLA keynote.