Knuth on Dijkstra (2014)
gigamonkeys.com
gigamonkeys.com
For those who haven't read them, I highly recommend taking some time to go through the EWD archive. No need to read them all at once, I made a point of trying to read one a week over a couple years, usually reading more, and got through most of the archive (not all though, I also caught up on a lot of the more well-known ones on top of my attempted in-order reading). Very informative and gives a lot more insight into Dijkstra's thoughts than the usual "he was an arrogant jerk" type comments that come up here. He may have been arrogant, and at times a jerk, but he was a very intelligent man with a lot of good-to-great ideas that still aren't well-disseminated through our discipline.
What an excellent troll! One of Dijkstra's more well-known papers is "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" [1].
1. https://homepages.cwi.nl/~storm/teaching/reader/Dijkstra68.p...
Yes, but he does so respectfully. A lost art…
But, do you have pointers to such cases?
Which is why:
"This idea might not be good"
can be better than:
"This idea is BS"
Even if the second is more direct and is what you "trully think".
Because even if you "trully think" the idea is BS, that's just like, your opinion, man. The first formulation makes this clearer.
P.S. You can't complaint about me being curt here though, I blunty said what I trully think about this :-)
So you prefer people hiding their true thoughts instead of being honest? Its probably one of the major reasons for all the BS we have around...
Dutch people: "xyz is not worth my time."
Polite Dutch people: "Unfortunately, xyz is not worth my time."
British people: "xyz is interesting indeed."
I don't really know well enough what other cultures would say.
They're all opinions, but on direct opinions you can at least trust that the person telling them believes them. It's not disrespect, direct communication yields a higher signal.
I prefer "your idea is pure garbage" over "it needs more work" because I want honesty above anything else as it leads to more efficient execution.
Yes, some people feelings are hurt, but when I happen to cause it, I remember that 10 years old kids can survive much more brutal expressions while adults act like they are part of the mickey mouse club.
Does it though, or does it lead to animosity, back-stabbings, a toxic environment, discouragement and so on?
Such things also have their tradeoffs.
At my current job I have a team of 4 and we can say to each other much more nasty shit then that, and I can't imagine working with such passion with anybody else (the feeling is mutual). We also accomplish x10 more then any other team.
We did an "Insights course" [0]. It seems like you are in a team of red people (competitive, determined, strong willed), but green people (caring, sharing, encouraging) people will have bad time there. Same for precise, deliberate, questioning individuals.
I think it is good to consider how the way you communicate can affect others. Honestly based on what you are saying I would like working with you, I too have a big mouth. But don't you want to at least try to be a person that can work with any character type?
And does it matter who is welcome in your environment? Sometimes people are stuck with you, it seems like when they don't match your expectations, you are going to give them a bad time.
[0] https://www.mudamasters.com/en/personal-growth-personality/i...
Yes, we are "red people" I guess :)
> Honestly based on what you are saying I would like working with you, I too have a big mouth.
You can :) If you don't mind working remote and have good programming skillz and like big gov projects feel free to contact me :)
> Sometimes people are stuck with you
Then I will try to unstack :)
I just want to add some more thoughts, I feel in a sense that I'm talking to past me.
You see, Bro, I get it. I worked in a supermarket when I was younger, we constantly insulted each other's mother and we said multiple things a day that would more than embarrass us should we ever become POTUS. We physically hurt each other. And I think back of those times with feelings of warmth in my heart.
But, was it an open, inviting environment? No. It was very unwelcoming and harsh to anybody but our own character type. It may have been the place where I worked, but I would not call it a professional environment. In my current opinion a professional environment is welcoming, inclusive and respectful to anybody.
I would encourage you to try to reach beyond your current group, there is much to discover. Open up, try on different characters, roles and forms of humor. I bet that you can be more welcoming, more pleasant to work with for a broader range of character types and be more productive at the same time. Who knows you'll discover another side of yourself even. Sure you are having fun now, but it will end and it may end differently than you can currently imagine. This is really a warning.
Some jokes or remarks are really not acceptable to some people, and they may get you into trouble. And, as I feel now, rightfully so. Try not to identify yourself completely with this group you are now in. If anything, they are quite rare and not universally loved.
> We physically hurt each other.
> But, was it an open, inviting environment? No.
> It was very unwelcoming and harsh to anybody but our own character type
I hate physical violence. You don't seem to keep it in focus here. Like I said, you extrapolate too much, its obvious now.
It should be unwelcoming and harsh to other character types, because that is the character type that we need to finish the job in this ecosystem. Its even the opposite of what you claim - we have a dude who was playing according to the rules you mention, and now he "switched" to our side because he realized that sometimes, strong words is the only way to make something happen :) There is a saying here "the beating came out of heaven".
> I would encourage you to try to reach beyond your current group, there is much to discover.
No thanks. I am not that young as you seem to think.
> I bet that you can be more welcoming, more pleasant to work with
People just love to work with me - both colleagues and stakeholders, because I get the job done and because they think my reactions are unique and funny. You please continue to be pleasant, that is probably great skill to have in supermarket, not in my line of work where people expect results yesterday :)
You see, you can theorize all you want, you cant fight the facts.
Also, this is not set in stone - if certain situation requires me to be nice little puppy in order to get the job done, I will do it. Like I said, context is everything, and life is a mess, while you can keep pretending you play board game with strictly set rules everybody is following...
> Try not to identify yourself completely with this group you are now in. If anything, they are quite rare and not universally loved.
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reflect"
“We’ll consider your idea” to avoid confrontation because of a bad idea is sugarcoating.
I prefer unprofessional then :)
What you could say is: "I don't understand currently how this is valuable, based on assumption X, Y and Z I think that the idea would not work, why do you think it will?" You may be surprised what you will get as a response, because the person with the idea has obviously spend way more time with it than you, because you were (probably) just told about it.
And when it does turn out that you were right (and the idea is not perfect), that means you have taken this opportunity and taught a colleague a valuable lesson. And all this by not saying "his or her idea it total garbage." That's just a way to make people stop telling you their ideas.
There is a lot of ground between being arrogant and not having the guts to express your doubts in a respectful way.
You are overthinking it. Nobody should think like that.
> "I don't understand currently how this is valuable, based on assumption X, Y and Z I think that the idea would not work, why do you think it will?"
That is similar to trying to kill potential wood fire with a bucket of water. No thanks :)
> because the person with the idea has obviously spend way more time with it than you
Assumptions.
> There is a lot of ground between being arrogant and not having the guts to express your doubts in a respectful way.
Its all about how you do it. But if person I work with on successful projects tells me that and even turns his back and go away... I am sure gonna think hard about it.
Context is everything. And I can tell you that your idea is total BS and still respect you a lot. You seem to care only about the surface.
Do you realize that compared to you probably many people do “overthink” things? And that that expression is very relative? Or do you want to also claim that your amount of thinking is the exact right amount?
Totally irrelevant. But shows that you seem to put people in boxes.
> Likewise, I may completely fail to integrate into your culture.
Why did you extrapolate? I am talking about myself, not about my nations culture.
> Do you realize that compared to you probably many people do “overthink” things?
Yes, I realize. I am not in illusion. Yet, that is their problem really. Like I said, my goal in life is NOT to promote Mickey Mouse club.
> Or do you want to also claim that your amount of thinking is the exact right amount?
Again, you extrapolate, typical for people that suffer from "hurt feelings" problem regarding minor things. I was talking about very specific thing and you introduced entire universe into it. I call this phenomena "random drama". People like you are exactly the type I don't want to work with based on this very short conversation, but I am open minded in case you have a bad day or something :)
I can promise you I'll be there to answer any questions you might have, unless I am dead (or you). :D
I also saved this thread on web archive in case HN goes down and added it in my calendar note:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210815125616/https://news.ycom...
Also on archive is in case web archive goes down:
That is not honesty or directness, that is just more colorful language. It's like saying "two plus fucking two is fucking four" is more honest than "two plus two is four". It may be more forceful, but the color just distract from the substance (which actually tend to be the point when such language is used).
> Yes, some people feelings are hurt, but when I happen to cause it, I remember that 10 years old kids can survive much more brutal expressions while adults act like they are part of the mickey mouse club.
Don't blame others for the failures of your communication. Grow up and take responsibility for your end of the communication.
A phrase like "pure garbage" has two elements of which one is very troublesome and the other is sometimes fine.
The one that is sometimes fine is "pure garbage" is a metaphor. You now leave it on the listener to decode that metaphor. Why not be direct and say: "Your idea is too flawed."
The one that I believe to be very troublesome is that it overgeneralizes its conclusion. Ideas are in almost all cases never pure garbage. I've never said that someone's idea is pure garbage (in a good faith discussion). I have said things like: your fundamental assumption of your idea is fundamentally flawed and therefore it's not worth for me to listen to this idea any further (e.g. when someone says I should look into astrology to fix my life problems -- family members are fun and I cut them off, I know it's rude -- even for Dutch standards but I'm tired of it).
I am Dutch and I if someone told me something is interesting and it turns out they don't find it interesting you loose a lot of respect. Are you really too afraid to tell me the truth? Do you think I'm weak and can't handle it? Do you not respect my intelligence and ability to think that I can defend an idea? If you'd do this often here people will simply stop telling you their ideas and you will become know as incredibly insincere. Why not offer some honest feedback? Are you to afraid to look like you don't know enough about the subject? What a weak thing to do, feigning interest or pretending to like something.
Just speak the truth, say you lack the knowledge to judge the idea (but perhaps you want to learn more about it?), offer intelligent feedback and engage in a discussion or say you don't have time to discuss this right know. What's so hard about that? Show some strength and character.
Expats living in the Netherlands do sometimes express it being too blunt at times, yet quite a few more find it refreshing.
And it's easy to see why. It's simple and efficient. You don't have to decode all the misdirection, fakeness, sugar coating that comes with less direct communication. You just get the message. It's less effort to parse and no information is lost in the process.
And as you experience the delivery of this directness in real life, you can tell from body language that the messenger has zero intention to harm or upset you. Good intentions are clear.
Directness is also an asset in business. Just the other week I openly challenged a manager 3 levels above me in a large 200+ meeting. I basically told him that his plan was based on quicksand, poor research (none at all), with unclear benefits.
There's very few countries where you can do this, but here you can. And it's wonderful. In other cultures, you may simply not challenge a bad idea at all or needs tons of political massaging to get your feedback across.
The result is that real, direct, non-political feedback flows to the top, which should be a core interest for leaders, rather than having yes-men.
The dutch reject nonsense as part of their core, based on the national slogan "be normal, that's crazy enough". We don't like fluff, celebrities showing of too much, window dressing, misdirection, or any other tactic that is based on deceit.
As such, arrogance is not our style, it is the very thing we break down.
Interesting organization theory question here.
And even if they were, who's to say there aren't other criteria which wouldn't have greater influence on the success or failure than the directness of the Dutch versus the English euphemisms and couching.
Ever heard of Shell? Unilever? Heineken? Philips? Tons of lesser known names dominating water management, heavy transport, mega scale infrastructure?
ASML, as the basis of almost any device with a chip in it?
Ever heard of farm valley? The ridiculously tiny country being the #2 food exporter:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/holland-...
Is this all a result of directness? No, it's a combination of the total dutch business culture:
Directness. Brutal efficiency. Brutal effectiveness (work smart, not hard). Next-level automation. Rationality. Fast error-correcting. Reliability, do what you promise.
Combined with world class infrastructure in roads, the largest rail network in the world, the busiest harbor of Rotterdam, and Schiphol airport.
Combined with an extremely international outlook, consisting of a trade history spanning centuries.
When you want to get shit done, and get it done properly, you call the Dutch.
With this, I end my patriotism.
Should this be a little too biased, note that it's Steve Jobs producing the quote "the best idea has to win", in reference to how one's position in a hierarchy should carry no weight to the value of an idea.
And finally, I've once read a philosopher claiming that the reason capitalism has won over communism, is the lack of a feedback loop in communism.
Well intended directness combined with anti-fragility is a super power.
However, I _strongly disagree_ eith a few of your points, which I think are over-the-top and incorrect.
And I say so given my experience of living in the Netherlands and working for two of the five companies you quoted.
I understood you are Dutch and making a good point against a possibly Usonian troll which has limited view of your country, its culture, tradition and influence.
However, years working for Dutch companies and living in the Netherlands allows me to state those points I quoted below are not true. (And I am not limiting my analysis to the companies I worked, but also government, companies I had to deal with, etc.)
The points are disagree are:
> Next-level automation. Rationality. Fast error-correcting. Reliability, do what you promise.
Rationality is one of the biggest "cultural shocks" I had when moving to the Netherlands.
It is _said_ that decisions are rational; in practice, it is the _opinion of the selected majority_ that matters, or a deturpation of the poedermodel.
And above it all,
> When you want to get shit done, and get it done properly, you call the Dutch.
Trading ia what flows in Dutch blood. It is part of their DNA. It is incredible. They are incredibly good at it.
That implicitly means they are great salespeople. And salespeople sells the buyer's dream, not necessarily a reality.
What I want to say is that Dutch are not exemplary engineers. Do not misunderstand me: they had instances of great scientists and engineers, but it is not their number one cultural goal as the comment I quoted implied.
And that is so clear that engineers, for decades, are brought from abroad. The exemplary Dutch engineering companies are _managed by Dutch_, but the products are (mostly) _designed by immigrants_ (which are incorrectly called _expats_).
So, the culture of "do it properly" (which is pretry engineering mindset) is not around, as implied.
The "get it _somehow looking_ done", however, is. And that is trading mindset.
Once I learned this cultural difference, I got piece of mind and started to be more effective at my Dutch job and society—and that is the "work smart" part you told about.
And it is not the Dutch are trying to fool people delivering _somehow looking done_ stuff. Not at all! It is just that their trading features comes first over their engineering ones.
Still, and again, I tend to agree with most of what you said.
Poldermodel : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder_model
And then things got out of hand with national pride, highlighting the achievements, without any bad parts. I'm well aware of how one-dimensional it may come across. Because it it one dimensional.
In dutch tradition, you should destroy my claims. You partially did, although still far too carefully ;)
I compliment you on the deep insight into dutch business culture where trade triumphs engineering. Indeed, this is reflected into almost any business where the finance, purchase, and sales departments are enormous and basically considered the business.
Next, we may also have "hands". The people doing the actual work. Undervalued and underpaid, and easily replaced. It's definitely true that it's not an engineering culture in that sense.
Likewise, some pride is misplaced. If you look at a company like ASML, a high tech miracle, most of its engineers are Asian expats.
All true. Yet one thing persists in the culture: outcomes. Whatever it is that we build, or however we do it, there's very little tolerance for error. We don't accept half-assed products, we don't accept a lack of reliability. If errors occur, we don't let them linger.
I mention this in contrast to the many other nations I traveled to, many of which accepting things to barely function, not at all, or not reliably so. That's what I mean with "proper".
I think that if you could gather your two comments and make an article out of it, it would be very useful to newcomers in the Netherlands. I would have loved to read such lucid text when I first arrived here.
(Well, not everyone blogs, so it's just a passing opinion.)
> In dutch tradition, you should destroy my claims. You partially did, although still far too carefully ;)
When replying on internet, I try to be a little careful because the medium is limited text and, then, all my real opinions, with all their nuances, tend to not be expressed, then misunderstood, and then used as weapon against me. I usually distance myself from commenting on internet forums because forums tend to be quite a harmful environment for one's mental health.
> All true. Yet one thing persists in the culture: outcomes. Whatever it is that we build, or however we do it, there's very little tolerance for error. We don't accept half-assed products, we don't accept a lack of reliability. If errors occur, we don't let them linger. > > I mention this in contrast to the many other nations I traveled to, many of which accepting things to barely function, not at all, or not reliably so. That's what I mean with "proper".
By now, I lived in a few different countries, and that experience taught me that all countries have some interesting pros and odd cons.
Given that, I must agree with your sentence, and that is what I meant with
>> And it is not the Dutch are trying to fool people delivering _somehow looking done_ stuff. Not at all! It is just that their trading features comes first over their engineering ones.
There are countries, including in the list the top trading and economically successful ones, that fooling the customer is common practice; that "back-stabbing" for personal benefit is seen as "smart"; that personal and honourable values are thrashed for profit.
The Dutch culture might have its sins, but those aforementioned are not the ones.
(OK. Except on real estate, where a bare minimum habitation, considered regular in any civilised country, is market as "luxurious". But the sin here is hyperbole, not meanness.)
Again, all in all I agree with you! :)
Well, the price most definetely was luxurious, wasn't it?
Well, first the Netherlands do have some of the most succesful corportations in the world, given their size.
Second, because while being valuable inside a business, honesty is not necessarily the be all end all criterium for success.
You can be honest and more efficient for it, but lack other factors, like a large internal market, a huge military and diplomatic machine securing cheap resources, controlling trade routes, supporting your national currency and brokering deals for your companies, a good headstart when Europe was broken down and shattered from WWI and WWII which barely affected your country, and so on.
And, of course, honesty in society in general might be very good without translating in any way to more succesful businesses. Kindness, honesty, and treating people well are good and valuable things, but they don't make you money, nor help you build a billion dollar corporation.
A honest ad, for example, for most products would be "you don't really need it", not "this will change your life". A conscious corporation would make products long lasting, which loses money compared to planned obsolesence.
A kind employer would compensate employees well, sharing its mega-profits, not squeeze blood out of them - but having your employees wear diapers at the warehouse or risk getting fired for bathroom breaks makes you more money.
Similarly pressuring employees that need the job into working 14+ hour shifts to get more units ready for Xmas is more profitable that giving them work/life balance and understanding that holidays are for family and friends, not for pushing people into more consumption.
In my experience pure academics and scientists are more arrogant and lack empathy rather than being Dutch and direct.
And should such a direct remark upset you, the other party expects directness in return, and can handle it.
As for academics and such, we reject elitism. Sure enough we accept differences in success and wealth, but we won't let it get to your head:
https://images0.persgroep.net/rcs/rl7MK73sKTwSudzEJaBS-jjwW7...
That's our PM cycling to work. You can talk to him should you come across him. There's no secret service, as in our society, he's "just another guy".
This is expressed in another local slogan: "stick your head above the corn field and we chop it off".
It's not a reference to communism, it means don't get cocky when successful, don't believe you're better than anybody else at a human level, and don't take yourself so serious.
Admittedly, times are changing and inequality is on the rise.
I'll end with saying that the "bluntness" some complain about is still a suppressed version of our actual directness. I'll illustrate by means of a recent conversation with a friend:
Me: what do you think of my new clothes? Friend: Did you dig this up from the graveyard?
I love my country :)
Er...didn't the Dutch government just resign due to a fraud scandal?
Obviously my remarks should be seen as a stereotype, I'm not going to vouch for 100% of dutch people. The point I was trying to make is that dutch people speak directly in general, so what they say is close to what they think. The lack of an additional agenda.
I would hope that you agree that as it comes to politicians, the above is the least likely to be true. Dutch politicians operate in a massively complex consensus culture where it's inevitable that they have quite a lot of hidden agendas.
In this case, it was a cover up. Few would care, but I can give some background as to what happened. The Netherlands has a relatively generous welfare system, which invites abuse. There have been incidents, such as immigrants claiming all kinds of benefits without even living in the country.
The response was a more firm approach in checking eligibility. Yet this new firm approach got out of hand and incorrectly flagged a group of people as fraudulent, whilst they were not, at huge individual cost. Many got into huge debts, lost their house, and so on.
Shit happens. It's an error, or plain incompetence. The true scandal is the response. Instead of admitting the error and compensating the victims, most effort went into denial and covering it up.
So, you have a point. But we're comparing apples to oranges. The typical dutch person in the streets is not the same thing as a sleazy politician.
(Queue the why dontchas, naively illustrating my point ;))
“It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.”
This is just typical gatekeeping, not "truth".
In context you can see that he (rather hilariously) savaged some of the most popular commercial programming languages at that time: FORTRAN, PL/I, BASIC, COBOL, and APL.
(Somehow Lisp/Algol/C/Pascal got off unscathed; presumably they weren't popular enough in 1975 - otherwise Dijkstra would undoubtedly have had bad things to say about them as well.)
The biggest parallel I can draw here is people that went to college, and then in their 30s and 40s tell people to not go to college.
I'd say that having done something lends more authority to the opinion that one should not do so.
> Take a scientist in any field. The scientist gets older and says, “Oh, yes, some of the things that I’ve been doing have a really great payoff and other things, I’m not using anymore. I’m not going to have my students waste time on the stuff that doesn’t make giant steps. I’m not going to talk about low-level stuff at all. These theoretical concepts are really so powerful—that’s the whole story. Forget about how I got to this point.”
It's easy to forget what was important and what wasn't once you've learned something. This is why experts don't necessarily make good teachers.
My point that the position you make seemingly implies that one never has standing to advise against doing something.
Essentially your way of thinking leads to a “damned if one do; damned if one not do” situation.
If you went to college and then tell people to not go to college, maybe you should try to talk to people that didn't go to college first to see how it went for them.
So he would have thought differently in a world with more mature tools like Haskell, Rust, or a decent Lisp implementation.
The problem is when you want to get into basic data structures. The learning curve for Haskell, if you want students to come up with their own implementations, steepens up a lot.
Compare this to other disciplines. Imagine a modern bridge builder looking at the bridges of old, and come up with a model just large enough to communicate to other bridge builders how bridges should be made.
If the bridge builders of old "just did something", what is our modern bridge builder modelling then? You could argue, "but those bridges are still around, so they probably did something well". Sure, but that's just settling for a local optimum.
If I want a good modern bridge, I hope that engineer is taking physics into account -- and not spending their time on how the old bridge builders were throwing with mud and stones. We can't stand on shoulders if we keep on regurgitating spoiled food.
After all, she did manage writing software which put a man on the moon and is generally recognized as some of the most solid and bug-free software ever. Nevertheless Dijkstra is completely dismissive (and downright condescending) because they don't use the theoretically correct approach.
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd08xx/EWD852a.PDF
For anyone else who found the transcription to plaintext difficult to follow at times (some formatting losses). The second is a slightly edited version from 5 days after the first.
Most of the "take-down of Margaret Hamilton's methodology" is directed at the writing in 3 texts, and a large chunk is just a brutal description of one James Martin and his book Program Design which Is Provably Correct.
Quoting Dijkstra:
> I have never had reasons to consider James Martin as a competent computing scientist, but that he is a competent salesman I don’t doubt: he must have seen a market for [2] at $200 apiece. The book is so terrible that that is a depressing thought.
This is a really off color remark for an author of "Coders at work".
Dijkstra was probably amongst the first European coders and wrote the earliest operating systems.
If you read knuths remarks, he just has a difference of opinion, but the final conclusion is the same. The theory of algorithms is more important particular language or implementation details.
EDIT: Case in point, I learned my first language Pascal programming for 6 months without a computer.
They agree on the philosophy, but Knuth disagrees on the praxis.