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I've dug deep into that quote and it wasn't even so much about the BASIC we know from the 8-bits. ;-) He also criticized every other major language at the time,
by ikari_pl 3y ago
I've dug deep into that quote and it wasn't even so much about the BASIC we know from the 8-bits. ;-) He also criticized every other major language at the time, except Pascal and (slowly emerging) C.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38743062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38743062
- dventimi 3y agoI know. I think he was just taking the piss and I love it. And yet, there's more than a grain of truth in this quote and in other salty aphorisms from Dijkstra, especially: "The tools we use have a profound influence on our thinking habits, and, therefore, our thinking ability." I went from Basic to Pascal to C/C++ to Java to Python which bear more than a passing resemblance to one another. Am I habituated to overlook or discount other programming paradigms, like Lisp, Prolog, and Forth? I can tell you with certainty that I once was. My view was even more limited then than it is now, and yet at that time I thought I knew everything worth knowing.