Edsger Dijkstra Quotes
There is very little point in trying to urge the world to mend its ways as long as that world is still convinced that its ways are perfectly adequate.
The problems of the real world are primarily those you are left with when you refuse to apply their effective solutions.
In their capacity as a tool, computers will be but a ripple on the surface of our culture. In their capacity as intellectual challenge, they are without precedent in the cultural history of mankind.
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
The use of anthropomorphic terminology forces you linguistically to adopt an operational view. And it makes it practically impossible to argue about programs independently of their being executed.
It is not the task of the University to offer what society asks for, but to give what society needs.
Computer science has as much to do with computers as astronomy has to do with telescopes.
In the software business there are many enterprises for which it is not clear that science can help them; that science should try is not clear either.
Some consider the puzzles that are created by their omissions as spicy challenges, without which their texts would be boring; others shun clarity lest their work is considered trivial.
The effort of using machines to mimic the human mind has always struck me as rather silly. I would rather use them to mimic something better.
If there is one 'scientific' discovery I am proud of, it is the discovery of the habit of writing without publication in mind.
Several people have told me that my inability to suffer fools gladly is one of my main weaknesses.
A convincing demonstration of correctness being impossible as long as the mechanism is regarded as a black box, our only hope lies in not regarding the mechanism as a black box.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.