Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure. – Edsger Dijkstra
Why has elegance found so little following? That is the reality of it. Elegance has the disadvantage, if thats what it is, that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it. – Edsger Dijkstra
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. – Edsger Dijkstra
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim. – Edsger Dijkstra
It must not be forgotten in fairness to the National Government that apartheid is not just a policy of oppression but an attempt – in my opinion an attempt doomed to failure – to find an alternative to a policy of racial integration which is fair to both white and black. – Harry Oppenheimer