>It's that he chose to develop and share how he did what he did. It's that you can read through one of his papers and it makes you feel like you could have applied his methods and made the same discovery. Of course that's not necessarily true, but that it's even sometimes true is remarkable.
Exactly Right!
This is the reason i worship at the "Altar of Dijkstra :-)" because he shows by example how to apply mathematical logic to develop a step-by-step solution to seemingly complicated problems. I am more interested in understanding the methodology of thinking involved in the problem-solving process (the essence of his genius which cannot be taught directly but can only be demonstrated via examples) than the details of the actual examples themselves.
To borrow Dr. Watson's words about Sherlock Holmes (from the story "The Red-Headed League");
I trust that I am not more dense than my neighbors, but I was always oppressed with a sense of my own stupidity in my dealings with [Edsger Dijkstra]. Here I had heard what he had heard, I had seen what he had seen, and yet from his words it was evident that he saw clearly not only what had happened but what was about to happen, while to me the whole business was still confused and grotesque.
Exactly Right!
This is the reason i worship at the "Altar of Dijkstra :-)" because he shows by example how to apply mathematical logic to develop a step-by-step solution to seemingly complicated problems. I am more interested in understanding the methodology of thinking involved in the problem-solving process (the essence of his genius which cannot be taught directly but can only be demonstrated via examples) than the details of the actual examples themselves.
To borrow Dr. Watson's words about Sherlock Holmes (from the story "The Red-Headed League");
I trust that I am not more dense than my neighbors, but I was always oppressed with a sense of my own stupidity in my dealings with [Edsger Dijkstra]. Here I had heard what he had heard, I had seen what he had seen, and yet from his words it was evident that he saw clearly not only what had happened but what was about to happen, while to me the whole business was still confused and grotesque.