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Dijkstras take-down of Margaret Hamilton's methodology is quite revealing of his attitude: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD852.htm
by goto11 5y ago
Dijkstras take-down of Margaret Hamilton's methodology is quite revealing of his attitude: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD852.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/E...
After all, she did manage writing software which put a man on the moon and is generally recognized as some of the most solid and bug-free software ever. Nevertheless Dijkstra is completely dismissive (and downright condescending) because they don't use the theoretically correct approach.
- Jtsummers 5y agohttps://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd08xx/EWD852.PDF https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd08xx/EWD852.PDF https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd08xx/EWD852a.PDF https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd08xx/EWD852a.PDF For anyone else who found the transcription to plaintext difficult to follow at times (some formatting losses). The second is a slightly edited version from 5 days after the first. Most of the "take-down of Margaret Hamilton's methodology" is directed at the writing in 3 texts, and a large chunk is just a brutal description of one James Martin and his book Program Design which Is Provably Correct. Quoting Dijkstra: > I have never had reasons to consider James Martin as a competent computing scientist, but that he is a competent salesman I don’t doubt: he must have seen a market for [2] at $200 apiece. The book is so terrible that that is a depressing thought.