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> Your original contention that Dijkstra had not written much code (thus insinuating that he was mostly "talk") I could have been clearer about this, yes. I kn

> Your original contention that Dijkstra had not written much code (thus insinuating that he was mostly "talk") I could have been clearer about this, yes. I know that he was quite skilled at writing code in his younger years. However, he largely seemed to have given up on the practice by the 1970s, and the less he was coding, the more certain he seemed to become how it ought to be done and taught. > From Mathematics we all know the difficulty of writing and reading proofs. So your expectation that Dijkstra's usage of it should be easy to grasp is fundamentally wrong. So the supposedly superior methodology is neither easier to use, nor does it produce easier to maintain programs. It's almost like its superiority consists purely of gatekeeping the programming profession to those conversant with the methodology's shibboleths. > I have not read EWD550 I should have led with that. As far as I know, it's the longest published program to which Dijkstra tried to apply his methodology, so, to me, the clearest evidence that it does not scale.

rramadass 4y ago
You now seem to be trying to argue the inarguable and also trying to play "gotcha" games. To take the latter first, because EWD550 is intricate and unfinished, is it your contention that Dijkstra was wrong about his methodology which he had already demonstrated in other papers and books? This is not an argument but only calls into question one's own current competency and effort put forth to understand what has been written down. I am sure that if one sits down with it for concentrated study for some time that one can understand it. People lose interest in many things that they take up. This is even more true of geniuses since they have so much going on that once they have understood the gist of something they move on and leave the rest as "an exercise for the reader". They are not obligated to spell out everything for "the reader"; whether "The Reader" likes it or not is quite another matter. So to me it seems your inference on EWD550 is wrong. >So the supposedly superior methodology is neither easier to use, nor does it produce easier to maintain programs. It's almost like its superiority consists purely of gatekeeping the programming profession to those conversant with the methodology's shibboleths. Again your inference is wrong. The "superiority" lies in "proving correctness w.r.t. specification" and not in "ease of comprehension". There is no gatekeeping or any other malicious intent involved but merely insistence on a methodology. Mathematical Proofs are by definition intricate, tedious and require concentrated study. That is the nature of mathematical logic and there are no shortcuts (the famous example of Russel and Whitehead taking more than 300 pages to prove 1+1=2 comes to mind here). If one wants to follow Dijkstra's method to the letter, then one has to "up one's game". If one doesn't want to do that but get the same benefits (to a certain degree) then use a simpler approach like DbC based on the same principles but much more "user friendly". To paraphrase a famous quote: "There is no Royal Road to understanding Dijkstra".

rramadass 4y ago

You now seem to be trying to argue the inarguable and also trying to play "gotcha" games. To take the latter first, because EWD550 is intricate and unfinished, is it your contention that Dijkstra was wrong about his methodology which he had already demonstrated in other papers and books? This is not an argument but only calls into question one's own current competency and effort put forth to understand what has been written down. I am sure that if one sits down with it for concentrated study for some time that one can understand it. People lose interest in many things that they take up. This is even more true of geniuses since they have so much going on that once they have understood the gist of something they move on and leave the rest as "an exercise for the reader". They are not obligated to spell out everything for "the reader"; whether "The Reader" likes it or not is quite another matter. So to me it seems your inference on EWD550 is wrong. >So the supposedly superior methodology is neither easier to use, nor does it produce easier to maintain programs. It's almost like its superiority consists purely of gatekeeping the programming profession to those conversant with the methodology's shibboleths. Again your inference is wrong. The "superiority" lies in "proving correctness w.r.t. specification" and not in "ease of comprehension". There is no gatekeeping or any other malicious intent involved but merely insistence on a methodology. Mathematical Proofs are by definition intricate, tedious and require concentrated study. That is the nature of mathematical logic and there are no shortcuts (the famous example of Russel and Whitehead taking more than 300 pages to prove 1+1=2 comes to mind here). If one wants to follow Dijkstra's method to the letter, then one has to "up one's game". If one doesn't want to do that but get the same benefits (to a certain degree) then use a simpler approach like DbC based on the same principles but much more "user friendly". To paraphrase a famous quote: "There is no Royal Road to understanding Dijkstra".