
On the fact that the Atlantic Ocean has two sides (1982) [pdf] - acidflask
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd06xx/EWD611.PDF
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ranko
Also available in HTML:
[https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/E...](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD611.html)

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elcapitan
Not advocating Alan Kay's view on Dijkstra here, but his answer to this is
still very funny:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KivesLMncs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KivesLMncs)

"You may know that arrogance in computer science is measured in Nano-
Dijkstras. [..] I wrote a rebuttal paper just named 'On the fact that most
software in the world is written on one side of the Atlantic'."

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david-given
I hear that in the mathematical world it's measures as milli-Mandelbrots. Why,
some people even get as high as three, or occasionally four!

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Al-Khwarizmi
24 years later, the description/criticism he makes of the American university
culture is accurate for (at least most of) Europe as well. We even have
"management science" everywhere.

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andrewl
I like his description of one unfortunate aspect of American culture he
discovered on his first visit:

"...for the first time in my life I was confronted with a civilization that
did not give its scientists the automatic benefit of the doubt or the respect
that I was used to. On that trip I learned the word "egg-head" as a truly
untranslatable Americanism...I was shocked to see how intellectuals could
be-—as it were—-by definition suspect, and I remember that the feeling of
uncertainty from which I saw my colleagues suffer, worried me very much."

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Animats
That's Djykstra. Programming is too hard for the average programmer. He's
probably right, yet work does get done. More or less.

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3princip
A fascinating read.

> P.S. I apologize for having been so often so apologetic.

Made me chuckle.

