“Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful
meyerweb.com
meyerweb.com
The reason they are in the passive voice is that the original "considered harmful" essay was a letter to the editor, and therefore was titled not by the author, but by the editor[1]. Therefore, to expand out the subject of the sentence, the title was actually saying "Go To Statement Considered Harmful [by Edsger Dijkstra]".
[1]: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD13xx/EW...
Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful
"Stuck Accelerator Pedals in Toyotas Considered Harmful" makes sense, but "Why stuck accelerator pedals in Toyotas are not my favorite accelerator pedals" isn't really descriptive of the issue, although is kind of funny as a title.
To put it another way, there is a place for both titles, but "Considered Harmful" should be reserved for dispassionate analysis.
> I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.
The older I get the more immune I feel to arrogance; to me it's a symptom of frustration coming from high skill colliding with the rest of the world's lack thereof.
Dijkstra worked in Computer Science. And the relevant quote there is that "Computer Science is no more about computers, than Astronomy is about telescopes.”
Dr. Kay did phenomenally important work with computers and programming. It’s important in its own right. Either of us could say that we prefer to dwell on the ramifications of one or the other.
I think it’s safe to say that if you took either of their contributions away outright, our world in 2015 would be much poorer for it.
Now if you want a good Dr. Kay quote, “Programming is a Pop Culture” has to be high on the list. I think he’s deeply right about that, but being right doesn’t in any way tarnish the nano-Dijkstras associated with damning the entire field.
I agree that they both did very important contributions, and that there's probably no way to compare their magnitude, so it comes down to personal interpretation, there's no argument there. Still, I believe the arrogance comment by Kay was douchey :)
"He was the first to make the claim that programming is so inherently complex that (...)"
Meanwhile Alan Kay had 12 year old kids making computer games (videos on Web Archive).
Dijkstra contributed algorithms. In that sense he contributed as a mathematician. That doesn't diminish what he did. But it does not compare with what Alan Kay did for the sum of these two parts: computers, and people.
Dijkstra was correct in saying that you don't even need a computer to do "Computer Science," all you need is a pencil, paper, and a mental model of what you're trying to do given computer constraints.
Dijkstra more theoretical; Kay more hands-on.
I think BOTH are necessary, or at least important.
If Dijkstra is so awesome someone should write a Wikipedia article with more important achievements and less medals.
Instead of waiting for someone to write on the wiki, you could go out there and google a bit.
Very briefly: he made major contributions to compiler and OS design (including the first Algol compiler and a whole OS, the THE OS), devised two fundamental graph algorithms (shortest path and spanning tree), and spearheaded making programming into a serious discipline rooted in maths (along the way pretty much giving birth to structured programming).
He also wrote (longhand!) over a thousand essays on CS and related topics, which are (as far as I've read, and I've read quite a few) all a joy to read.
You can start here: http://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/dijkstra_1053701.cfm and here: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/
Seems the original reference is mentioned quite clearly. quote:
> The Jargon File has a short entry on “considered harmful” that encapsulates the genesis of such essays:
> Edsger W. Dijkstra’s note in the March 1968 Communications of the ACM, “Go To Statement Considered Harmful,” fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars…. As it turns out, the title under which the letter appeared was actually supplied by CACM’s editor, Niklaus Wirth.
> The controversy resulting from the article’s publication became so heated that the CACM subsequently decided to never again publish pieces with such assertive positions.
Granted some of the links have since rotted over the last 13yrs though.
I'd much rather read a forceful, strong argument that contains some controversial claims than a piss-weak "perceived benefits and weaknesses of" essay, as the author suggests. Sometimes treating a topic brutally can get your point across more effectively. For example, some of James Mickens' more colourful writing demonstrates this.
:)
Now I'm just confused.
Or to put it more simply: this essay is a plot by the intelligentsia to make us reason like a madman.
Ouch. Brain freeze!
I don't really care why you quit using X. I don't need validation from some blog about what technology to use or not use. I can evaluate X technology on my own, thank you.
They often want to tell you "We're switching from X to Y, because our use-cases aren't that of X (anymore)"
But they write it like "We're switching from X to Y and you should too, because X is really bad for everyone!"
If you ignore the holier-than-you writing style, and try to read these articles like the first example, they have some useful information :)
How often do you see:
"If you have use case X, SoftGood will help you solve problem Y without triggering problem Z. If you have use case K, SoftGood may not be the best fit for you."
vs
"You should use SoftPanacea -- it's design-driven, big-scale, cloud-fronked, makes your life easier, and is awesome!"
I vote we focus on eliminating the most annoying of all title formats, the "gate" suffix.
Yeah.
:)
I considering switching back anyway. Fastmail search is just awful.
Many times I find the points identified in the articles to be unfounded, and those points are easily dismissed. But every once in a while there is a real genuine problem.
I would rather dismiss 10 irrelevant points than miss the one show stopping fault identified in the article.
Also, IMO, the worst of such "considered harmful" essays were those that advised against the use of stored procedures and programmatic constructs directly on relational databases in favour of the shiny new hive-mind created ORMs.
The funny thing is, just as the best ORM technologies are beginning to sort their shyte out, we are seeing essays that they are now considered harmful. Reboot.
It's a boring and pompous cliché. In 1968, it was original. Now, write your own title.
Since Hitler references are invariably followed by someone pointing out that Godwin's prophecy has been fulfilled, this reduces to a simply corollary of the law itself.
The advice needs to be updated slightly, then, to clarify the apparent confusion: you should, if you can, write essays for all those reasons, but step one of writing an essay for those purposes is find something meaningful to say.
...based on writing essays.
There are other ways to get noticed and hired. And, writing essays that reveal that you have nothing meaningful to say probably isn't a valuable use of time to get noticed and hired (if you are trying to get noticed and hired for a tech job, taking the same time to increase your portfolio of open source contributions you can point to is probably more valuable.)
> ...based on writing essays.
> There are other ways to get noticed and hired.
Whenever hiring discussions come up, the three ways put forward to "get noticed" are personal blog, Github projects, and meetup attendance. None of those avenues work unless you have something meaningful to say or build outside of your day job. Having something meaningful to say or build in your day job seems to be deprecated in this market, because liars.
He's a juke box hero, got stars in his eyes
Yeah, juke box hero, got stars in his eyes
(http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/foreigner/jukeboxhero.html)
:-D
I'd say that driving "Considered Harmful" out of the conversation should be considered harmful. The "considered harmful" titles are great because they provide a very concise encapsulation of the contents of the essay. When I see "X considered harmful" I immediately know that the work will be arguing against X. I've read a number of these because I want to see what there is to be said against things that I often take for granted, e.g. the utility of Angular or whatever.
28 December 2002
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.