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 a

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.