Dijkstra's Manuscripts Available Online 251
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.)
Full Text (Subscribers Only Article) (Score:4, Informative)
On his proto-blog archive, the words and spirit of the late computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra live on, inspiring new generations of geeks.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Rachel Chalmers
July 9, 2003 | considered harmful: adj. [very common] Edsger W. Dijkstra's note in the March 1968 "Communications of the ACM," "Goto Statement Considered Harmful," fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars
That entry in Eric Raymond's edition of the Hacker's Dictionary was my first encounter with pioneering computer scientist Edsger Wybe Dijkstra, but thanks to the dedicated work of volunteers at the University of Texas at Austin, it was very far from my last. These volunteers maintain the massive and growing EWD archive. It's a tremendous and erudite proto-blog, the extraordinary record of an exemplary life, and it's one of my favorite places on the Web. A year after his death, a computer scientist who devoted himself to teaching people how to think is still on the podium, delivering gem after gem of insight.
Born in the Netherlands in 1930, Dijkstra was a witty and thoroughly engaging writer in his nonnative English ("I have learned to be very suspicious of ideas I cannot express well in both Dutch and English," he noted, late in life. "As nice as it is to have the union at one's disposal, it is wise to confine oneself to the intersection.")
Over a 40-year period that began in the early 1960s, Dijkstra wrote prolifically on timely and compelling topics: from his experience of the evolution of universities on both sides of the Atlantic from the post-WWII era to the beginning of the 21st century; to meditations on the science and art of teaching; to incredibly rich and detailed accounts of his own intellectual methods (don't miss EWD 666: "A problem solved in my head," which contains the endearing aperçu: "Goldbach's Conjecture -- I had never thought that I would ever use that!")
Like entries in a modern weblog, many of the informal pieces collected in the EWD archive were never published in any traditional sense. Instead they were copied (and later photocopied), numbered sequentially from EWD 0 (sadly lost to history) to EWD 1317 ("From van IJzeren's correspondence to my aunt & uncle," written a few months before his death in August 2002) and circulated from the greedy hands of one computer scientist to another like Eastern European samizdat or fourth-generation copies of the Lions books.
For years I have been dipping into this priceless archive (or at least its English language subset; is there a great Dutch-English translator out there who would do the world the incalculable favor of translating the rest?) and I have yet to scratch the surface of its treasures. But I continue to follow the trail; the archive is redolent of the spoor of Dijkstra's intellectual evolution, the physical evidence of a great mind thinking aloud. A fine, clear light shines through it all, the light of intelligence unmarred by any particular arrogance or egotism -- the set of personal qualities I tend to think of as integrity.
Dijkstra is at his iconoclastic best on, for example, academic hypocrisy:
"Today's mathematical culture suffers from a style of publication, in which the results and the reasoning justifying them are published quite explicitly but in which all the pondering is rigorously suppressed, as if the need to ponder were a vulgar infirmity about which we don't talk in civilized company."
Or the relationship between programming and mathematics:
"Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians."
Or the truth itself, however unpalatable:
"French science is poisoned by politics."
One particularly apposite piece (EWD 696) is titled "Written in
Bio (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is Dykstra still relevant today? (Score:5, Informative)
Salon.com (Score:4, Informative)
"Salon has a history of significant losses and expects to incur operating losses in the near future. For the year ended March 31, 2003, Salon had net losses attributable to common stockholders of $5.7 million and had an accumulated deficit of $82.3 million." -- SEC Annual Report
Re:Is Dykstra still relevant today? (Score:3, Informative)
And in any case, what do think most of those applications on your computer were written in?
Re:Is Dykstra still relevant today? (Score:5, Informative)
You have entirely missed the point.
If you know math and language theory the actual language you currently know does not matter. Language is a tool. You can learn to use a new tool in a matter of weeks if not days. Math is the knowledge on how to use all of the tools, not just the particular shiny one that has just been produced last week.
After learning 5 or 6, the next one comes in a matter of days. Been there, seen that, trying to do it.
This has not changed since Dykstra and ain't going to change. Ever. This is the fact known as the 5 times salary difference between the factory floor and the chief designer office.
It is a fact of life, it exists in all industries and it is here to stay.
Actually, Asimov has described this brilliantly in one of his novells. Read "Profession". It is thy best novell he ever wrote.
Re:Bio (Score:2, Informative)
Ummm... Not so much. (Score:5, Informative)
The Internet uses Border Gateway Protocol (BGPv4), which is a Path-Vector routing protocol. OSPF is a Link-State routing protocol.
OSPF is considered an IGP (Interior Gateway Protocol). It can be used within an autonomous system, but has no place in determining path selection for traffic between automonous systems.
As far as IGPs go, there's only one that would be capable of handling the routing table for the entire Internet, and it's not OSPF. IS-IS, Intermediate Syetem to Intermediate System, is another Link-State protocol developed by the OSI during the same period when OSPF was being developed.
They share a lot of similar features, and address all of the same shortcomings inherent to Distance-Vector routing protocols (RIP, IGRP). You can actually redistribute the full Internet routing table from BGP into IS-IS, and it will handle the strain.
Aside from the ability to handle astronomically large routing tables, IS-IS has one additional feature that sets it above OSPF: No requirement for a single backbone area (Area 0, in OSPF speak).
OSPF is not particularly well suited to "meshy" environments, due to the need for a single, clearly defined backbone area (In OSPF, all traffic between non-backbone areas must traverse Area 0). IS-IS alleviates this requirement. There can be multiple Inter-area paths, which can be very useful in a complex network.
Of course, the pool of IS-IS savvy network engineers is far smaller than that of the OSPF disciples, so you don't see it in use very often. The exception is in the service provider space. Big ISPs, and Backbone Carriers frequently utilize IS-IS when an IGP is called for, notably for it's ability to handle large routing tables.
(Don't get me wrong... I'm a fan of OSPF, but much like the programmer folks like to say, "It's just a tool in the toolbox." The savvy network engineer will utilize the Routing Protocol which best suits his requirements (In some cases he'll use more than one), just as the savvy programmer with utilize the programming language that best suits his requirements.)
In summary:
Re: Can someone shed more light on his misc. info? (Score:3, Informative)
> I've always thought the title of the GOTO paper was a master stroke. Anyone else would have called it "Why GOTO statements are bad" or "Structural problems caused by GOTO", and your reaction would be "That's his opinion" or "Gee, everyone knows that". He made it sound like it came from absolute authority, and if you disagreed, you were setting programming back.
Thing is, it wasn't his title [theregister.co.uk]; it was stuck on by Niklaus Wirth [wikipedia.org], inventor of Pascal, when he converted the paper to a "letter to the editor" to sneak it into the current issue of the ACM rag.