Slashdot Mirror
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra: 1930-2002
Order writes "Edsger Wybe Dijkstra, one of the founding fathers of computer science and the author of the famous "Go To Considered Harmful", has died on Aug. 6, 2002 after a long struggle with cancer."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
GOTO Heaven
As an aside, I remember this little snippet from the seminar:
Tulsa University had shuffled around some classrooms to free up a large conference room/lecture hall. Well, for those students who were supposed to attend a class in there that day, the administration had put a notice on the board "Class ???? - Goto 426 " (or something like that). Dr. Dijkstra had come in from the back of the room, was introduced, and started speaking - he never looked at the chalkboard the whole time. Well, when it came time for questions, one student (not me) asked him about the notice on the back of the room. Well, Dr. Dijkstra turned about, cleaned off the board, and said something about structuring the overall conversation, and that comment violated good system design.
"Any service that uses pathfinding algorithms (such as MapQuest) should pay their respest."
What a thoughtful post! Dictionary.com's pathfinding algorithms were able to find out what you mean by 'respest'. Heh.
...he is not going to need his forks anymore and the other guys are finally getting to eat?
seriously though, i think dijkstra will be remembered as long as there is the need to prevent race conditions... which in my eyes is quite an accomplishment.
-strangeloop
10 Birth
20 Death
30 if ( self != enlightened ) Goto 10
40 while( 1 ) Nirvana
If he's responsible for the pathing in RTSes, his journey from life to the afterworld will inevitibly get stuck on the edge of a tree...
I like spaghetti code. I grew up on AppleSoft Basic and GW-Basic (thank you microsoft).
I read books I picked up from the library for free which showed Basic programs threaded back and forth in sequence, for no apparent reason, and like this sentence, confusing the heck out of me. I saw it as a challenge. I also loved condition gotos'. They were evil.
Gosub? Bah. They ran out of memory too much. Because I hadn't the discipline to Return before I Goto'd out of the subroutine. So I used Goto's to simulate procedures. I also eventually used Goto's in a way that I would eventually learn is like structured programming. Set some variables, goto here, do stuff, goto back, set the same variables something else, goto here, do stuff, maybe goto back. Or it would be the end of the program.
Then I got my first C book. I still haven't got the hang of this language. Before the book even mentions "goto" it gives me a lecture on how awful goto's are and that they can produce spaghetti code. But I *like* spaghetti code. And whats with these labels? Line numbers were so much cooler. But I took the man's advice, I used functions.
But Basic spoiled me. I was never an effective programmer since. It wasn't long after I learned of structured programming that I got my first book on C++ and was introduced to object-oriented programming. Now, for someone using structured techniques for a couple years, the need for objects seemed to make sense. But I was lost in a sea of hierarchial classes and virtual methods.
When I first went on the internet, I started learning all kinds of crazy languages, hoping some of them would be simpler. And there were many. Except for forth and common lisp. Except for ML and Smalltalk. So I am still toying with scheme as I speak, still trying to figure out what exactly the difference between a recursive and iterative process is.
Eventually, I'll figure out how to write spaghetti code in this otherwise clean and elegant language too. Continuations sound promising, from what it sounds like.
I wish the best of Dijkstra--hope he rests in peace. Honestly, I've never heard of him until this post to slashdot.
But maybe it is slightly better for him not to know that some of us never learn.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
March 1968: Edsger W. Dijkstra- GOTO is dead!
August 2002: GOTO- Edsger W. Dijkstra is dead!
Down with Crapitali$m. Anarchy NOW!
Except Mapquest uses a slightly modified version of the algorithm...Find Path With Most Closed Exits First.
"I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself, "Dijkstra would not have liked this", well that would be enough immortality for me"
A very apt last quote for your post. It reminds me a little bit of one of Richard Feynman's friends talking about how he had seen Feynman in a dream, talking very animatedly about something or other, and he thought 'Should I tell him he's dead, or does he already know?'
OK, so it seemed more relevant in my own mind, but he certainly has left a legacy for others to follow.
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
"I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself, "Dijkstra would not have liked this", well that would be enough immortality for me"
Was he still talking about programming here?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Remember that? Only algorithm on my CS course I ever put into practical use. aka "No bracket required", (for Phil Collins fans).
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
(drivers/scsi/NCR5380.c, lines 1466-1468)
I was fortunate enough to obtain my Computer Science degree from the University of Texas during Dijkstra's tenure. I attended his lectures every time I got a chance, even when I wasn't enrolled in the class.
... for a few minutes. He then started trailing off again, and the same woman shouted "Speak louder, man! We can't hear a thing you're saying".
During one of his later lectures, the microphone was broken, and Dijkstra started speaking too quietly for us to hear him. After a few moments, a woman in the audience shouted "Would you please speak louder!".
We were taken aback at first, but Dijkstra apologized and spoke louder
Again, we all gasped at this apparent rudeness towards one of the worlds best computer scientists, but Dijkstra apolgized again, and spoke louder.
About ten minutes later, he trailed off again. This time when the woman shouted at him to speak up, he stopped what he was doing, came towards the audience and said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, please allow me to introduce my wife". We all roared with laughter.
Although Edsger is remembered for the article on the
goto, his development of the stack model was an
evolutionary leap in the development of computers.
Every computer made today embodies his model.
Interrupt handling, recursion, reentrant
programming, multi-programming, multi-processing,
virtual memory all come out of Edsger's model.
I had the great fortune to work on a Burroughs B5500
and later the first B6500 that made it out of
manufacturing. This entire series of computers
was based on Edsger's model and his Algol 60 compiler.
Tony Hoare may have put it best when he quipped
"Algol is an improvement over all its successors".
Certainly Edsger was an improvement over most of
his successors.
Jim Tarvid
Let's not forget this bit of fun. We can banish goto forever now that someone finally invented
comefrom.
>"A Programming Language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits"
I wonder if he knew that he can drop the "programming" part.
-cmh