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Twenty Years of Dijkstra's Cruelty
WatersOfOblivion writes "Twenty years ago today, Edsger Dijkstra, the greatest computer scientist to never own a computer, hand wrote and distributed 'On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer Science' (PDF), discussing the then-current state of Computer Science education. Twenty years later, does what he said still hold true? I know it is not the case where I went to school, but have most schools corrected course and are now being necessarily cruel to their Computer Science students?" Bonus: Dijkstra's handwriting.
They made us do mostly Java, even though a number of us could do C or C++.
Ofcourse I can write a line of code!
Behold, in al its glory:
printf("hello world");
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
You had hands? You kids are so spoiled these days.
cat > hello.c
printf("hello world");
^D
gcc hello.c
hello.c:1: error: expected declaration specifiers or '...' before string constant
hello.c:1: warning: data definition has no type or storage class
hello.c:1: warning: conflicting types for built-in function 'printf'
What do you think this is, wikipedia?
"Right from the beginning, and all through the course, we stress that the programmer's task is not just to write down a program, but that his main task is to give a formal proof that the program he proposes meets the equally formal functional specification."
Where exactly do semi-formalized, poorly thought-out specifications handed to you half-written out on a napkin and constantly subject to change fit into the programmers task and Dijkstra's world?
Our school had 3 separate Java classes, 3 separate C classes, and 3 separate C++ classes: all in 3 different departments.
Silly. This can't be true. Everyone knows that there are no classes in C.
A cat is no trade for integrity!
I don't think I really understand what Dijkstra is getting at here. Can someone explain it to me with a car analogy?
You have been trolled (by Dijkstra).
What do you think this is, wikipedia?[citation needed]
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Meh. Write-only Perl line noise.
How can that be a real program without about 10 lines of module and class declarations around it?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
But what a troll! Look around and see the pityful kind of trolls we are mostly left with now :(
That pompous windbag single handedly brought computing to modern age much like American Pie brought fun part of college life into movies.
I've got Karen Allen, Kevin Bacon, and the estate of John Belushi on Lines 1 through 4, and they'd like a word with you...
My forte is made out of cushions from my mom's couch.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
My forte is made out of cushions from my mom's couch.
You mean your mom's couche, I think.
Empires grow and crumble, and the Turtle Moves. Gods come and go, and still the Turtle Moves. The Turtle Moves.
Not that I come up from the basement very often, but I've never seen my mom bake bread :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
What about Beowulf? I mean, that's over a millennium ago, and he certainly left his mark on computer scientists.