Computing Science: Achievements and Challenges (EWD1284)

Edsger W. Dijkstra · 1 Mar 1999

Edsger W. Dijkstra did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
In computing, elegance is not a luxury: it decides between success and failure.

Their wordsin computing, elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a quality that decides between success and failure
Our reading
A design has to be kept simple for reliability and intellectual control, but nobody yet knows how to reach simplicity systematically.

Their wordswe know that for the sake of reliability and intellectual control we have to keep the design simple and disentangled, and in individual cases we have been remarkably successful, but we do not know how to reach simplicity in a systematic manner.

Keep reading

The other pieces are the ones whose claims are worded most like this one's. That measures language, not agreement: they may argue the opposite.