I came away from that paper with notes to track down exactly the same information. Alas, there does not seem to be a definitive answer. Googling a unique phra

I came away from that paper with notes to track down exactly the same information. Alas, there does not seem to be a definitive answer. Googling a unique phrase from the relevant text, this seems to be the main discussion: http://www.techques.com/question/13-113751/What-task-did-Dijkstra-give-volunteers,-which-was-mentioned-in-his-paper-The-Humble-Programmer http://www.techques.com/question/13-113751/What-task-did-Dij... The "answer" is the classic Dining Philosophers problem, which Dijkstra himself invented to illustrate the issues of concurrent programming. It isn't clear that this is actually what he meant, but it's probably the best we are going to get now that he is gone.