Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.
Edsger DijkstraIn passing I draw attention to another English expression which often occurs in Dutch texts: "the real world". In Dutch - and I am afraid not in Dutch alone - its usage is almost always a symptom of a violent anti-intellectualism.
Edsger DijkstraDon't compete with me: firstly, I have more experience, and secondly, I have chosen the weapons.
Edsger DijkstraBesides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.
Edsger DijkstraOur intellectual powers are rather geared to master static relations and that our powers to visualize processes evolving in time are relatively poorly developed. For that reason we should do (as wise programmers aware of our limitations) our utmost to shorten the conceptual gap between the static program and the dynamic process, to make the correspondence between the program (spread out in text space) and the process (spread out in time) as trivial as possible.
Edsger Dijkstra