Edsger Dijkstra - Discipline in Thought

You're viewing a comment by Paolo and its responses.

November 06, 2008, 11:28

First of all: I'm biased, I have such a profound admiration for EWD that my judgments will be clouded, so I'm not going to make any of them. ;-) On the other hand, I'd like to help clarify few things.

@Chris Koo

He had a very clear ideas of what elegance is for him. Not only in programming, but in everything involves thinking; this paper should clarify what he meant with elegance, or better, with mathematical elegance:
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd08xx/EWD896.PDF
or http://tinyurl.com/6dhp5y (HTML version)

This one is a bit longer, but even more explicit, still on the topic of mathematical elegance:
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd06xx/EWD619.PDF
or http://tinyurl.com/6g9v5x (HTML version)

@rougy:

More than "spranging from Zeus' head", a metaphor that would describe the way he wrote programs is that he was building up mathematical proofs; in fact, more than a metaphore, it is truth. His research involved deeply axiomatic formal methods of programming. To get a feel of what it involves you can check out this very long paper:
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd03xx/EWD316.PDF
or http://tinyurl.com/6gj2yn (HTML version)

Reply to this comment

Reply To This Comment

(why do I need your e-mail?)

(Your twitter name, if you have one. (I'm @pkrumins, btw.))

Comment Help

Type first 3 letters of your name: (just to make sure you're a human)

Please preview the comment before submitting to make sure it's OK.