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.)
Subscription not necessary (Score:4, Interesting)
Can someone shed more light on his misc. info? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why did he do this? For his own personal notes on which pens were good (I guess important if you are frequently writing things).
Why did he use pens and not electronic formats? For a CS person that surprises me.
Re:Is Dykstra still relevant today? (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, C++ and, as one of your responders aptly noted, Perl are not "legacy technology"- Just because something is old doesn't mean it's out of date. I won't pretend to be qualified to properly extoll the virtues of C++, but if you're really curious, I'm sure you could e-mail one of the C.S. profs here, bs at cs.tamu.edu (Bjarne Stroustrup).
Re:Can someone shed more light on his misc. info? (Score:2, Interesting)
This ensured that Dijkstra would never get the announcement, as he did have a computer.
How does having a computer ensure that you will not get email? All the professors at my school have said nothing but kind words about the man (although they have only mentioned him post-mortum). The professors that I am talking about also know the man and never mentioned cowering in fear of him, or trying to hide from him.
Re:Statement I don't agree on (Score:1, Interesting)
I've never found someone who is truly bad at maths to be any good at programming, or a good programmer who - with help to change the way they look at maths - to be useless at maths.
Re: Can someone shed more light on his misc. info? (Score:5, Interesting)
> One of my profs said he was giving a speach at Dijkstra's school. He wanted to make sure Dijkstra didn't attend (apperently Dijkstra was an asshole)
I don't know about 'asshole', but he certainly qualified as a curmudgeon. Famously, if he was at a talk and the speaker put up a slide that had more than one color in it, Djikstra would interrupt and ask what the different colors meant. (I actually had an opportunity to see him do that once.)
I have repeatedly heard rumors at second and third remove to the effect that at least some of the CS faculty at Texas found him "very divisive", but the rumors never told me what the context was. Decisions at faculty meetings, I would guess.
But it shouldn't surprise anyone on Slashdot to hear that some CS geniuses have a contrary streak.
Call for volunteers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Can someone shed more light on his misc. info? (Score:3, Interesting)
IF he did track what pen he was using, I can think of one possible reason. It was mentioned that these were photocopied and re-photocopied to several generations. During that process it won't be readily apparent what pen he used... but it might show that some pens gave text that withstood the degredation of copying better than others. If the papers that were written with, say, thick pens were the easiest to read 4 copy generations later, he could make a point to use thick pens in the future.
Just a thought.
Subject (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the major points he made before he left, and somewhat adamantly at that, was that software is so poor in quality nowadays because developers don't really bother to come up with formal proofs of correctness for their programs.
There was some back and forth from the audience on this point, with people wondering wether it was feasible for large pieces of software (e.g. OS kernels) to be proven, because of their size and complexity. He didn't seem to think that it should really be a problem, and attributed the lack of correctness proofs to laziness on the part of programmers.
It was an interesting talk.
No point to this post, really.
-Laxitive
Re: Can someone shed more light on his misc. info? (Score:5, Interesting)
> Since CS is (or at least should be) learning how to apply known algorithms to problems and the development of new algorithms to solve problems, CS should be very similar to math, and computer scientists ought to seem fairly similar to mathematicians.
For researchers in the 'theory' and 'algorithms' sub-fields of CS, I'd say they are mathematicians. They work with axioms and theorems and stuff just like other mathematicians do.
Other CS researchers are empiricists instead, e.g. most of those who do data mining or statistical natural language processing. And of course there's lots of other stuff in between. (E.g., network researchers may start off with an algorithmic concept but then run simulations to demonstrate their algorithm's effectiveness.)
There's a family of jokes to the effect that PhDs in computer science don't know anything about computers or programming or whatever. In actuality the individual's engagement with computers/programming will vary very much with the sub-field he's in. These days a theorist will need to be able to use LaTeX to write papers and read e-mail to see the conference announcements, but doesn't need to program at all. OTOH someone doing experiments with genetic algorithms will probably write their own code for their experiments, and may even turn into a hardware geek by building beowulf clusters to run the massively CPU-intensive experiments on.
> Most early CS people, as I understand it, were math people with an interest in computers.
I think you can still find a lot of older CS professors with degrees in applied mathematics. Computers were around long before CS departments even existed.
Re:Is Dykstra still relevant today? (Score:2, Interesting)
Suggested reading (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Full Text (Subscribers Only Article) (Score:2, Interesting)
I transferred from Architecture to Computer Science. People didn't understand how I could like both, and they really didn't understand it when I said they're very similar.
You understand it perfectly.
Re:Subject (Score:2, Interesting)
Ideally, kernels and other large portions of code are made up of smaller functions. If each function is proved correct, then all that should remain at the end is to verify that each link maintains integrity. Think of it as a recursive proof, if you will.
Re:Can someone shed more light on his misc. info? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is going to be really off topic, but it might be of interest to you...
I'm a lefty and have a terribly messy handwriting. As I aspire to be a comic artist (and have done so for years
I've had, what? 20 years to develop a proper handwriting letter.
It took me less than a year to develop the capability of writing an appreciable letter, by writing IN REVERSE, a la Da Vinci (although mine is of course a clear block letter). This mirrored lettering perfectly matches my current style of drawing, and I'm very satisfied with it.
My conclusion? Handwriting might say something, like people's faces do. But if you really want to judge beyond looks, you'd have to read what's written instead of caring about the handwriting.
I took a class from him at UT in '93 (Score:5, Interesting)
He was at UT when I did my master's in CS there, and he was certainly a character. When the speaker walked into the room and saw him on the front row, little beads of sweat would immediately begin to form.
I actually took a class from him, which had a vague Latin name he translated for us as "whatever I want to talk about". He was quirky and intimidating but friendly and engaging at the same time.
Some of the interesting things he did:
He took pictures of each of the students (I think there were 7 of us) to file away somewhere. I guess it helped him remember our names.
He used a different hand for writing on the chalkboard on alternate days. Lefty-days were sometimes a bit rough. He had broken his right wrist a year or so before, and wanted to ensure he could still function if it happened again.
The class had no tests and no homework, but featured an open-ended one-on-one "verbal final" at the end of the semester, either in his (large, corner, carpeted, blackboards-on-every-wall) office, or in his home.
The verbal final featured *me* with those little beads of sweat...
Favorite Quote (Score:4, Interesting)
E.W. Dijkstra: The end of Computing Science? [utexas.edu]
Austin, 19 November 2000
It is and isn't Mathematics (Score:2, Interesting)
In each branch of comp sci, you'll find people who will tell you that the others "are not computer science", but IMHO they all are real and useful aspects of the discipline.
Re:Full Text (Subscribers Only Article) (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm just a computer programmer, which is more like a carpenter than anything. I build things that other people want, just because I know how to do it. I didn't need any special education or certification to do my job, just experience with the tools of my trade. I'm just like a guy with a hammer.
Re:Compelling? (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless you've read a good number of his writings, it's hard to appreciate the way this guy thought.
He also had the neatest handwriting in the known universe. I recall getting one of his notes that seemed as immaculately neat as all the others - with a note at the end apologising for the quality of the handwriting as he'd written it with his other hand "because it could use some practice". He resented having to use a typewriter because he liked to invent new symbols. He always wrote code fragments in a programming language of his own invention for which no known compiler exists.
It may be that you could describe this as a 'blog' - it was disseminated by mail to people who he'd somehow run into or been associated with. I have no idea how many copies were sent out - but it must have been hundreds. The earliest ones were long before the advent of the Internet.
Whether it makes a suitable Salon story - I can't say.