Edsger Dijkstra Quotes

[Computer science] is not really about computers and it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes... and geometry isn't really about using surveying instruments.

Now, the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments. And that is, when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use.

Computer science is not as old as physics; it lags by a couple of hundred years. However, this does not mean that there is significantly less on the computer scientist's plate than on the physicist's: younger it may be, but it has had a far more intense upbringing!

I grew up as a computer scientist, and I've always been fascinated by algorithms.

Computer science is the operating system for all innovation.

We're losing track of the vastness of the potential for computer science. We really have to revive the beautiful intellectual joy of it, as opposed to the business potential.

There's my education in computers, right there; this is the whole thing, everything I took out of a book.

I've been programming computers since elementary school, where they taught us, and I stuck with computer science through high school and college.

Even though most people won't be directly involved with programming, everyone is affected by computers, so an educated person should have a good understanding of how computer hardware, software, and networks operate.

I studied Computer Science when I was in my undergrad and minored in Digital Art & Design.

If you've never programmed a computer, you should. There's nothing like it in the whole world. When you program a computer, it does exactly what you tell it to do. It's like designing a machine — any machine, like a car, like a faucet, like a gas-hinge for a door — using math and instructions. It's awesome in the truest sense: it can fill you with awe.

When somebody has learned how to program a computer ... You're joining a group of people who can do incredible things. They can make the computer do anything they can imagine.

What is the central core of the subject [computer science]? What is it that distinguishes it from the separate subjects with which it is related? What is the linking thread which gathers these disparate branches into a single discipline. My answer to these questions is simple -it is the art of programming a computer. It is the art of designing efficient and elegant methods of getting a computer to solve problems, theoretical or practical, small or large, simple or complex. It is the art of translating this design into an effective and accurate computer program.

To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge.

I have never suggested any principled difference between the natural and social sciences.

A programming language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits.

For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless. And then it occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match.

Science values static patterns.

For those who wish to stay and work in computer science or technology, fields badly in need of their services, let’s roll out the welcome mat.

You could say science also is an art.

Building Oracle is like doing math puzzles as a kid.

The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity.

FORTRAN, the infantile disorder, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.

People who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do.

Computer science needs to be part of the core curriculum - like algebra, biology, physics, or chemistry. We need all schools to teach it, not just 10%.