… the first challenge for computing science is to discover how to maintain order in a finite, but very large, discrete universe that is intricately intertwined. And a second, but not less important ch…

two such outstanding computing scientistsin order to save a file on his personal computer An anecdote by Dijkstra…

the material taught should have a staying power of, say, fifty yearsall material with a half-life of five years was bannedwere viewed as industrial products, and therefore not taught. EWD #1024…

By the time ALGOL 60 came around, this aspect had already created two completely different computing cultures. I remember a conversation in 1962, in Rome. We were sitting around a coffee table. One A…

Needless to say, this confusion between the score and the composition led to an underestimation of the intellectual challenges programming presents. EWD #1298…

Students are no longer seen as part of the solution, but as part of the problem, and textbooks and lecturing techniques have become so condescending that, if I were a student, I would take offence. I…

Around 1968, the time bomb exploded and worldwide the student revolutions broke loose, buildings were occupied and on campus, mob rule reigned. The revolution was successful in the sense that, when th…

All through the ages, the spectrum of educational practice has known two extremes. At the one end we have the guilds, in which knowledge is kept as a well-guarded secret, and for that reason is never…

We now know that electronic technology has no more to contribute to computing than the physical equipment. We now know that programmable computer is no more and no less than an extremely handy device…

… as long as computing science is not allowed to save the computer industry, we had better see to it that the computer industry does not kill computing science. EWD #1248…

There were 56 participants and, as a result of the subject, there was a relatively heavy representation of what pushes itself as “theoretical computing science” which, I am afraid, is just a euphemism…

LISP is a good example. In the early sixties we have suffered from a piece of computer science folklore, viz. that the crucial test whether on had designed “a good language” was, whether one could wri…