[PRL] dijkstra anecdote

Richard C. Cobbe cobbe at ccs.neu.edu
Fri Dec 5 10:48:11 EST 2003


Lo, on Friday, December 5, Joe Marshall did write:

> "Richard C. Cobbe" <cobbe at ccs.neu.edu> writes:
> 
> > Lo, on Friday, December 5, Joe Marshall did write:
> >
> >> David Herman <dherman at ccs.neu.edu> writes:
> >> 
> >> >> Firstly, simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require
> >> >> hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be
> >> >> appreciated.
> >> 
> >> Functional programming, Lisp, Scheme, Cambridge Polish notation
> >> (s-expressions), proper tail recursion, first-class continuations,
> >> bignums, automatic memory management, higher-order functions, ...
> >> 
> >
> > <SNIP>
> >
> > Forgive what may be an extraordinarily naïve question, but I don't know
> > how to interpret your message.  Are you questioning Dijkstra's claims,
> > or providing evidence to justify them?
> 
> Sorry.  I was enumerating examples of Dijkstra's claim.

Ah.  In that case, I agree completely.

Richard


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