[PRL] dijkstra anecdote

[Richard C. Cobbe]

Lo, on Friday, December 5, David Herman did write:

<SNIP>

> > [...] poor programmers-- derive their intellectual excitement from
> > not quite knowing what they are doing and prefer to be thrilled by
> > the marvel of the human mind (in particular their own ones).

At the risk of being inflammatory, I personally see a fair amount of
this in the hard-core Haskell/FP crowd, too.  Lots of really clever
math, but it results in programs that nobody but Wadler and Peyton Jones
can understand.  This, to me, is not useful.  I don't have examples at
my fingertips right now, but several of the papers that I read as part
of Ramsey's seminar back in September certainly qualify, in my book.

(And, I should clarify for those who don't know me all that well: when I
use the term `clever' when speaking of math or code, I very rarely
intend it as a compliment.  Rather, I'm usually referring to someone
who's trying very hard to outsmart themselves; such people, IME,
generally succeed.)

This, BTW, is one of the reasons why I think the PLT model is right: do
the theory, but don't stop there --- how can we use this theory to help
people generate useful code?

> > For them, the Dream of Leibniz is a Nightmare.

Just for the sake of recognizing the allusions, what is this Dream of
Leibniz?

Richard