E.W.Dijkstra Archive: The Humble Programmer (EWD 340)
cs.utexas.edu
cs.utexas.edu
An example from
http://www.i-programmer.info/history/people/144-dijkstra.htm...
He was legendary for not sitting quietly in lecturers and talks by others. Instead he would grow increasingly agitated until an outburst could not be contained any longer. David Gries recalled a time when he was lecturing with Dijkstra in the audience when he read "x=a" as "x equals a". This is of course a short hand for "assign a to x" and not a statement that x really is logically equal to a. From the back of the room Dijkstra shouted "becomes" and the room fell silent.
I know of Alan Kay's witty invective ("Arrogance in Computer Science is measured in nano-Dijkstras") but having read much of Dijkstra I'm not convinced that he was really arrogant so much as very insistent that programmers recognize their own limitations.
"As a slow-witted human being I have a very small head and I had better learn to live with it and to respect my limitations and give them full credit, rather than try to ignore them, for the latter vain effort will be punished by failure."