Revisiting The Ewds

Dijkstra was the original hipster. He was blogging earlier blogging was cool. "For over iv decades, he mailed copies of his consecutively numbered technical notes, trip reports, insightful observations, together with pungent commentaries, known collectively equally EWDs, to several dozen recipients inward academia together with industry. Thanks to the ubiquity of the photocopier together with the broad involvement inward Dijkstra’s writings, the informal circulation of many of the EWDs eventually reached into the thousands." And, thank you lot to the efforts of the University of Texas at Austin CS Department, all of these EWDs receive got been accessible to Earth conveniently.

I yell upward when I start discovered the EWDs equally a fresh graduate student. I was mesmerized. I read them alongside a lot of joy. It was equally if a novel basis had opened to me to discover. He had many insightful observations. I recommend all CSE graduate students to read the EWDs to grow their minds.

Now, I don't concord alongside Dijkstra on everything. He was likewise much of a perfectionist, together with believed inward getting things right inward 1 shot. He had this to nation on this:

There are really dissimilar programming styles. I tend to run into them equally Mozart versus Beethoven. When Mozart started to write, the composition was finished. He wrote the manuscript together with it was 'aus einem Guss' (from 1 cast). In beautiful handwriting, too. Beethoven was a doubter together with a struggler who started writing earlier he finished the composition together with thus glued corrections onto the page. In 1 house he did this ix times. When they peeled them, the concluding version proved identical to the start one.

In contrast to Dijkstra's position, I believe inward rapid prototyping together with that perfection comes from iteration.

Of course of study I all the same adore all the EWDs together with honor Dijkstra all the same. I mean, await at these gems inward the Wikiquotes page for Dijkstra:

• It is non the business of the University to offering what monastic tell asks for, but to give what monastic tell needs.
• The required techniques of effective reasoning are pretty formal, but equally long equally programming is done past times people that don't master copy them, the software crisis volition rest alongside us together with volition live on considered an incurable disease. And you lot know what incurable diseases do: they invite the quacks together with charlatans in, who inward this representative receive got the shape of Software Engineering gurus.
• Elegance is non a dispensable luxury but a character that decides betwixt success together with failure.
• The problems of the existent basis are primarily those you lot are left alongside when you lot reject to apply their effective solutions.

Some of his writings tin live on construed equally starting a flamewar (Are "Systems people" actually necessary?  :-). But he e'er had an of import indicate to make. In some of his EWDs, he role-played equally the "Chairman of the Board" of the fictitious Mathematics Inc., "a companionship that commercialized mathematical theorems the same agency that software companies commercialized reckoner programs". He did this to demonstrate how ridiculous it is to patent a theorem, algorithm, or code.

And thus at that spot is this: "The cruelty of teaching reckoner science."

This is a thirty page handwritten (beautifully) manifesto against the dry ground of CS teaching then, which unfortunately got worse inward the next years. The manifesto finishes alongside a bang!

Teaching to unsuspecting youngsters the effective job of formal methods is 1 of the joys of life because it is thus extremely rewarding. Within a few months, they uncovering their agency inward a novel basis alongside a justified score of confidence that is radically novel for them; inside a few months, their concept of intellectual civilization has acquired a radically novel dimension. To my gustation together with style, that is what instruction is about. Universities should non live on afraid of teaching radical novelties; on the contrary, it is their calling to welcome the chance to practise so. Their willingness to practise thus is our master copy safeguard against dictatorships, live on they of the proletariat, of the scientific establishment, or of the corporate elite.

And nearly Microsoft's closing of the MS Research at Silicon Valley:

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