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Edsger Wybe Dijkstra: 1930-2002

Posted by michael on from the goto-end dept.

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."

4 of 404 comments (clear)

  1. EWD Archives by charvolant · · Score: 5, Informative
    For more of his writings, the Edsger W. Dijkstra Archives contains a lot of interesting/insightful/amusing writings.

    A pity he's gone.

  2. More articles by devphil · · Score: 5, Informative


    Some links from my article that slashdot rejected some hours ago: the University of Texas announcement has a list of his awards and discoveries. (He taught at UT.) A brief paper (in PDF, it's scanned from a handwritten paper for CACM if I recall) shows his brilliant, clear, and concise methods of thought and writing.

    If you ever used an application that made use of shortest-path searching -- say, any real-time strategy game -- then you owe this man a debt of gratitude.

    --
    You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
  3. Some quotes of Edsger Dijkstra by Raindeer · · Score: 5, Informative

    I found the quotes here: http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in:8000/~rkj/dijkstraquotes .html I paste them here in full to counter the slashdot effect.

    Some Quotes of Edsger Dijkstra
    "Always design your programs as a member of a whole family of programs, including those that are likely to succeed it"

    "Separate Concerns"

    "A Programming Language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits"

    "The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full humility, and among other things he avoids clever tricks like the plague" (from 1972 Turing Award Lecture)

    "Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code"

    "Program testing can best show the presence of errors but never their absence"

    "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"

    And then my quote :-) -->

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  4. He did so much more... by Kook9 · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's a shame that /. seems to think "Go To Considered Harmful" is Dijkstra's signature achievement. He was profoundly influential in developing the theory of operating systems. He was one of the first proponents of layered design. He also did pioneering work in mutual exclusion (IIRC, he invented semaphores) and deadlock. In short, he is responsible for a lot of the fundamental concepts that we use to build complex systems today.