Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Dijkstra's Manuscripts Available Online

Posted by timothy on from the read-only dept.

Bodrius writes "Salon has a short but interesting article called GOTO considered joyful, about E. W. Dijkstra's manuscripts, as published by the University of Texas, and their bloggish nature. I'm not sure if the blog analogy is that accurate, but the articles are a must read for computer scientists and geeks in general." (Annoying but free click-through system for non-subscribers.)

2 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Call for volunteers by sheck · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The EWD archive is looking for volunteers to convert the handwritten articles to google-able HTML. See here if you are interested.

  2. I took a class from him at UT in '93 by wingbat · · Score: 5, Interesting
    > he certainly qualified as a curmudgeon. Famously, if he was at a talk and the speaker put up a slide that had more than one color in it, Djikstra would interrupt and ask what the different colors meant. (I actually had an opportunity to see him do that once.)

    He was at UT when I did my master's in CS there, and he was certainly a character. When the speaker walked into the room and saw him on the front row, little beads of sweat would immediately begin to form.

    I actually took a class from him, which had a vague Latin name he translated for us as "whatever I want to talk about". He was quirky and intimidating but friendly and engaging at the same time.

    Some of the interesting things he did:

    He took pictures of each of the students (I think there were 7 of us) to file away somewhere. I guess it helped him remember our names.

    He used a different hand for writing on the chalkboard on alternate days. Lefty-days were sometimes a bit rough. He had broken his right wrist a year or so before, and wanted to ensure he could still function if it happened again.

    The class had no tests and no homework, but featured an open-ended one-on-one "verbal final" at the end of the semester, either in his (large, corner, carpeted, blackboards-on-every-wall) office, or in his home.

    The verbal final featured *me* with those little beads of sweat...