

Dijkstra interview (subtitled, 24 mins, 300MB) [mpg video] - 10ren
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/video.html

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joris
Note that there are quite some mistakes in the subtitles, many of them changed
the meaning. For example "We mogen niet uit nonchalance fouten in een
programma aanbrengen. Dat moeten we systematisch en met zorg doen." (12:00) is
translated to "We should not introduce errors through sloppiness, but
systematically keep them out." whereas it should be "We should not introduce
errors through sloppiness, but do this [the introduction of errors]
systematically and with care."

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DarkShikari
As I figure not everyone here has a blazingly fast connection and the Google
Video link was pretty low quality, I've uploaded a mirror here:

<http://mirror05.x264.nl/Dark/Flash/dijkstra.html>

(Direct link: <http://mirror05.x264.nl/Dark/Flash/dijkstra.mp4> , 44MB MP4)

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ars
Can someone post just the subtitles? (So I can read/skim them.)

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yannis
Thanks for posting it. Very interesting to note that Dijkstra advocates that a
program should have no version numbers!

~~~
JBiserkov
Because version 1 should be feature-complete and perfect like a Mozart
composition.

And that's very hard to achieve and market/sell.

\+ He doesn't take into account the technical advantages that make new
features plausible (Live Preview in Office 2007 comes to mind).

His views are a bit extreme, but still we can learn from him. Although we are
not programming for non-existent machines, I've found(the hard way) that
_thinking hard_ about a problem can save countless man-hours in development(of
unnecessary features), debugging(an overly-complex implementation) and
maintenance(of inflexible designs, that result from diving straight in
problem-area you don't understand).

I enjoyed the video because I haven't seen him before, but it's far from the
dense talks I'm used to.

May be I should read his Turing award lecture.

~~~
edw519
"...thinking hard about a problem can save countless man-hours in
development..., debugging...and maintenance..."

Interesting.

I find the exact opposite is just as effective. When I stop thinking so hard
and just release the problem, a much better approach often comes back to me
when I least expect it. This is a very hard thing to do. Once it worked a few
times, I learned to develop a little faith in my inner "background processor".

~~~
10ren
I misread that as "just release the product", which is the iterative
development that perturbs Dijkstra. I think it can work really well for hill-
climbing problems, where you have the right basic idea, and just need to keep
tweaking it. But then you get enmeshed in those initial assumptions, like
vines dragging you down... and you can never leave that hill.

However, you wrote "just release the problem" (as a contrast to "thinking
hard"). I agree that straining over a problem often doesn't help. I think that
the kind of elegant solutions Dijkstra admires are more likely to come once
you've absorbed the problem, and be receptive to solutions from your
unconscious. Henri Poincaré _It is by logic we prove, it is by intuition that
we invent_

But I don't recall Dijkstra ever speak of intuition. Maybe for him, straining
did work? One thing I've found is that straining to create a better
representation (simpler, only the key things) does seem to help. It's fairly
straightforward, but hard work. It helps because I can then _see_ the problem
- and my intuition can come into play.

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wizardofoz
On Google Video:
[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6873628658308030363...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6873628658308030363&ei=nLFmSunNC8LrlQefrf1r&q=dijkstra&hl=en)

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321abc
Alan Kay bashing Dijkstra -- <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7ROTJKkhuI>

