Back around 1972, during my IBM days, I heard him speak at the University of Toronto - "Synchronizing Primitives" as I recall. It was interesting, but not earth shattering, since we were already using the techniques at the IBM lab.Z4usV wrote:Edsger Dijkstra (1930-2002)
However I have to agree with Dijkstra turning someone who began with any dialect of BASIC turning to a great developer in any other computer language will be a "helluva" job.
He obviously had a big influence on computational theory, but accusing software developers of being brain dead if they learned their trade on COBOL or BASIC, was elitist, to say the least. It's like saying that someone who first learns to ride a bicycle will never make a good Formula One driver.
Using formal methods to prove the validity of a program, and even create the code, is an objective that is doomed to failure. It's impossible to know all the variables that can influence a system or the behaviours to be performed in response to these unknown inputs. I've often wondered if Dijkstra actually wrote any real-world programs -- he might have had a different view of the world if he'd written a few BASIC programs.
Rod