3 ms·

I believe that Dijkstra is too often remembered chiefly for his dismissive, not to say snarky aphorisms. This gives a very different picture of him.

by cafard 4y ago

082349872349872 4y ago
This letter suggests that Dijkstra's tone was a function of intended audience: the aphorisms which inspired the nano-Dijkstra (as measure of arrogance) were intended for peers, Who Should Have Known Better; the supportive encouragement was intended for a junior, Who May Yet Someday Do Something Interesting.
- rramadass 4y ago
  Well said! Too often i see people being dismissive of Dijkstra because of his aphorisms, they don't understand the context that drove it. In my mind he was a "True Perfectionist" who demanded Perfection of himself and everybody else. It was a rare uncompromising and mathematically focused mind well suited to the then nascent "Computing Science" field.
- kragen 4y ago
  while there is something to this, it is also important context that io was already something very interesting indeed; though raph was 19 he was already advancing human knowledge in a way that many of dijkstra's supposed peers were failing to do it is a shame that io is not more well known, because it is a brilliant achievement; by virtue of a simple syntactic trick it turns explicit cps code from its usual impenetrable form into something quite readable
  - akkartik 4y ago
    Is there a link to learn more about this project? It seems different from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_(programming_language)
    - 082349872349872 4y ago
      Io: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/70931.70934 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/70931.70934 Viewing continuations as the "mother of all monads", this work (1989) could have anticipated Moggi (1991) if there had been continued development in that direction! (it would've taken much more work though, as IIRC EWD noted Io as presented wasn't properly associative in ';') Moggi91: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~crary/819-f09/Moggi91.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~crary/819-f09/Moggi91.pdf
    - kragen 4y ago
      that's right, it's unrelated to steve dekorte's io, which is also kind of cool but not in the same fundamental way levien's io is maybe less practical, though it's hard to tell since nobody's done the work of putting together an implementation with batteries my notes on it from sometime in 02007–02009 are at https://dercuano.github.io/notes/raph-io.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/raph-io.html but i didn't have a copy of the actual paper at the time, just some badly ocred code and quotes from the paper, plus some commentary
tluyben2 4y ago
Just read all his letters; he was snarky because he was concerned about the state of computing. In some ways I think he was right. My father studied under him and I studied under some of his pupils: my father always said that Dijkstra was concerned that young people would be too sloppy about computing, creating all kinds of disasters and that's why he had to try his best to prevent that from happening. Dijkstra especially got angry at physicists for sloppy programming and believed it was a big issue going forward; mathematicians (computer scientists in uni's were mostly mathematicians) had enough rigor to prove the code correct before entering it into the computer. I am happy he didn't quite get to see that JS/PY are now so popular and that people without rigorous formal training are wielding these tools; he would've needed extensive therapy probably as his life's work basically failed.

I believe that Dijkstra is too often remembered chiefly for his dismissive, not to say snarky aphorisms. This gives a very different picture of him.

by cafard 4y ago

I believe that Dijkstra is too often remembered chiefly for his dismissive, not to say snarky aphorisms. This gives a very different picture of him.

082349872349872 4y ago

This letter suggests that Dijkstra's tone was a function of intended audience: the aphorisms which inspired the nano-Dijkstra (as measure of arrogance) were intended for peers, Who Should Have Known Better; the supportive encouragement was intended for a junior, Who May Yet Someday Do Something Interesting.

rramadass 4y ago
Well said! Too often i see people being dismissive of Dijkstra because of his aphorisms, they don't understand the context that drove it. In my mind he was a "True Perfectionist" who demanded Perfection of himself and everybody else. It was a rare uncompromising and mathematically focused mind well suited to the then nascent "Computing Science" field.
kragen 4y ago
while there is something to this, it is also important context that io was already something very interesting indeed; though raph was 19 he was already advancing human knowledge in a way that many of dijkstra's supposed peers were failing to do it is a shame that io is not more well known, because it is a brilliant achievement; by virtue of a simple syntactic trick it turns explicit cps code from its usual impenetrable form into something quite readable
- akkartik 4y ago
  Is there a link to learn more about this project? It seems different from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_(programming_language)
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    Io: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/70931.70934 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/70931.70934 Viewing continuations as the "mother of all monads", this work (1989) could have anticipated Moggi (1991) if there had been continued development in that direction! (it would've taken much more work though, as IIRC EWD noted Io as presented wasn't properly associative in ';') Moggi91: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~crary/819-f09/Moggi91.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~crary/819-f09/Moggi91.pdf
  - kragen 4y ago
    that's right, it's unrelated to steve dekorte's io, which is also kind of cool but not in the same fundamental way levien's io is maybe less practical, though it's hard to tell since nobody's done the work of putting together an implementation with batteries my notes on it from sometime in 02007–02009 are at https://dercuano.github.io/notes/raph-io.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/raph-io.html but i didn't have a copy of the actual paper at the time, just some badly ocred code and quotes from the paper, plus some commentary

tluyben2 4y ago

Just read all his letters; he was snarky because he was concerned about the state of computing. In some ways I think he was right. My father studied under him and I studied under some of his pupils: my father always said that Dijkstra was concerned that young people would be too sloppy about computing, creating all kinds of disasters and that's why he had to try his best to prevent that from happening. Dijkstra especially got angry at physicists for sloppy programming and believed it was a big issue going forward; mathematicians (computer scientists in uni's were mostly mathematicians) had enough rigor to prove the code correct before entering it into the computer. I am happy he didn't quite get to see that JS/PY are now so popular and that people without rigorous formal training are wielding these tools; he would've needed extensive therapy probably as his life's work basically failed.