
The threats to computing science (Dijkstra circa 1984) - fogus
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD898.html
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scott_s
Oh, yikes: "I recently read a series of articles on the Shuttle on-board
software and, though President Reagan has generously offered a teacher a free
ride, I tell you I am not available."

That teacher died in the Challenger disaster. Although, it was famously the
result of the O-rings not maintaining their seal, not the software. (Feynman
was actually impressed with the software during the inquiry, but perhaps
that's because he didn't have the software-eye that Dijkstra did.)

~~~
sb
Read this and understand where the (justified) fear comes from:
<http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3522>

Personally, I am happy that those pieces of source code appear with a big time
delay; probably I wouldn't drive a car knowing details of the source code.

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sb
This is a classic amongst the EWDs. It contains many brilliant quotes on the
state of computing science in that era, shortly before he left the Netherlands
for teaching at the University of Texas at Austin.

His view of "software engineering" is at least insightful (and sadly true as
far as I am concerned) and the thinking that the programming language is our
primary obstacle to finding the Elixir and/or the Stone can be found often--
given one tries to look closly enough... (The metaphor alone is very well
chosen and in the usual witty Dijkstra style; reading is highly recommended!)

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wglb
It is particularly interesting to read this essay again after reading _Coders
at Work_ in which the serious and respected practitioners of our craft support
many of the arguments made here. In particular, one that I have myself been
guilty of is that "once the proper way of communicating with the machines had
been found, all programming ills would have been cured". This is underscored
by the interviews in Coders at Work.

