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
Perfecting oneself is as much unlearning as it is learning. – 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
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim. – Edsger Dijkstra