I wonder. And I'm curious what other readers think Dijkstra meant by that. I think, as far as the part about mathematicians goes, that the point is that once t

I wonder. And I'm curious what other readers think Dijkstra meant by that. I think, as far as the part about mathematicians goes, that the point is that once the problem is stated sufficiently abstractly and sufficiently precisely, there is no problem. Forget all the nonsense about trains and toilets and rail yards and whatnot. You start with a single linear, symmetric object, and you don't have a problem. Then you break it into two sub-objects, one of them asymmetric ... |-T-| = |-| + |T-| ... and now you have a problem. If you want the problem to go away, just un-break apart the pieces. QED. (As Dewey said, "A problem well posed is half-solved." And sometimes doesn't even exist.)