As Dijkstra was preparing for his end of life, organizing his documents and correspondence became an important task. Cancer had snuck up on him and there was not much time.
One senior professor, who was helping out with this, asked Dijkstra what is to be done with his correspondences. The professor, quite renowned himself, relates a story where Dijsktra tells him from his hospital bed, to keep the ones with "Tony" and throw the rest.
The professor adds with a dry wit, that his own correspondence with Dijsktra were in the pile too.
John Backus had some correspondence with Dijkstra that's worth a read: https://medium.com/@acidflask/this-guys-arrogance-takes-your...
There's that immortal Alan Kay line "arrogance in computer science is measured in nano Dijkstras".
That's a famous quote and age might have mellowed him. But he was not like that at all in person with his students. He did insist that one be precise with ones words.
The origin of the quote may have more to do with cultural differences between the Dutch and Americans.
That's a great point which never occurred to me about Dijkstra, even though I knew where he came from. My father in law used to like this joke: "He was Dutch and behaved as such."
I feel there is a tension between computer science is math and computer science is plumbing.
I’d want to see an example of Dijkstra’s “arrogance” that wasn’t justified.
The “truths that might hurt” essay is a great example. Yeah, the truth hurts for many people. People don’t like being called out on their folly, particularly if it’s something they don’t personally control. That Durant make it “arrogant” to point it out.
Also, Alan Kaye is overrated. Object orientation is one of those painful truths.
Alan Kay himself said this quote is taken out-of-context and so people need to stop repeating it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11799963
> and so people need to stop repeating it
That would seem to be your sentiment, not his, based on the link you shared. Rather than being censorious he shared a nice story on the matter.
No, it is not my sentiment nor am i being censorious.
It can be inferred from Kay's own words. He probably was just poking fun in a tongue-in-cheek manner often seen amongst larger-than-life figures.
John Backus called Edsger Dijkstra arrogant since the latter was highly critical of the former's research in functional programming (not the substance but the hyping). Kay was probably riffing off of that.
The problem is that a lot of noobs/kids/oldies-who-should-know-better often dismiss(!) Dijkstra's work because of this silly quote. Thus in this case, a "nice story" is actually an obstacle to people reading Dijkstra.
> Kay was probably riffing off of that.
You don't need to hypothesize about all this, to put things in their proper context you could listen to the speech where he famously said it.
https://youtu.be/aYT2se94eU0?t=324
> It can be inferred from Kay's own words. He probably was just poking fun in a tongue-in-cheek manner often seen amongst larger-than-life figures.
...is that not obvious from the original quote? Maybe it's a cultural difference (I'm from Ireland), but that's how I've always interpreted and it's never occurred to me that people took it seriously or as anything other than tongue in cheek.
Weirdly, that ten-year-old Alan Kay comment is shown as "1 day ago" by HN.
Oof - not sure what happened there but it was probably a fat-fingered thing from me merging today's threads. Fixed now. Thanks for the heads-up!
Incredible letters, thanks for sharing. I wish some of this correspondence was published in physical books. What a joy it would be to read.