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Not sure if I agree with his conclusion that Dijkstra believed all programming should be done by an "elite corps" of programmers. He believed (rightly or wrongl

by csb6 7mo ago

Not sure if I agree with his conclusion that Dijkstra believed all programming should be done by an "elite corps" of programmers. He believed (rightly or wrongly) that undergraduate students could be taught his mathematical methods of programming, and that formal methods could make programming simpler and more manageable. Claiming he was against "working-class" programmers seems silly; anyone employed as a programmer will work for a living and so would be working-class.

AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
All right, he believed that all programming should be done by his approach, or one highly similar. He could train undergrads, but anyone who wasn't trained his way shouldn't be programming. Is that a fair statement?
- thwarted 7mo ago
  This is such a common position in just about every professional industry, codified legally or as personal belief, that it barely qualifies to be called out as unique to Dijkstra.
  - kelipso 7mo ago
    Yes, who would say structured programming is bad these days, though maybe it wasn’t a popular sentiment at the time. Though I find this thread funny, “Dijktra was elitist, oh no, he did the gatekeeping, what horror, let’s abandon structured programming and seeing programming as a discipline altogether”.
bsoles 7mo ago
His article "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science" (https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD103...) really resonated with me in the past, albeit it might be enforcing the assessment of the parent post regarding his more elitist approach to software development. He says: > A number of these phenomena have been bundled under the name "Software Engineering". As economics is known as "The Miserable Science", software engineering should be known as "The Doomed Discipline", doomed because it cannot even approach its goal since its goal is self-contradictory. Software engineering, of course, presents itself as another worthy cause, but that is eyewash: if you carefully read its literature and analyse what its devotees actually do, you will discover that software engineering has accepted as its charter "How to program if you cannot.".
- bitwize 7mo ago
  That sounds even more absurdly elitist today in part because "How to program if you cannot" is literally a solved problem now.

by csb6 7mo ago

AnimalMuppet 7mo ago

All right, he believed that all programming should be done by his approach, or one highly similar. He could train undergrads, but anyone who wasn't trained his way shouldn't be programming. Is that a fair statement?

thwarted 7mo ago
This is such a common position in just about every professional industry, codified legally or as personal belief, that it barely qualifies to be called out as unique to Dijkstra.
- kelipso 7mo ago
  Yes, who would say structured programming is bad these days, though maybe it wasn’t a popular sentiment at the time. Though I find this thread funny, “Dijktra was elitist, oh no, he did the gatekeeping, what horror, let’s abandon structured programming and seeing programming as a discipline altogether”.

bsoles 7mo ago

His article "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science" (https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD103...) really resonated with me in the past, albeit it might be enforcing the assessment of the parent post regarding his more elitist approach to software development. He says: > A number of these phenomena have been bundled under the name "Software Engineering". As economics is known as "The Miserable Science", software engineering should be known as "The Doomed Discipline", doomed because it cannot even approach its goal since its goal is self-contradictory. Software engineering, of course, presents itself as another worthy cause, but that is eyewash: if you carefully read its literature and analyse what its devotees actually do, you will discover that software engineering has accepted as its charter "How to program if you cannot.".

bitwize 7mo ago
That sounds even more absurdly elitist today in part because "How to program if you cannot" is literally a solved problem now.