Edsger W. Dijkstra

● Born May 11, 1930 in Rotterdam ● Graduated from Leiden in 1956 in Mathematics and Physics ● First employed by Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam ● Moved to a professorship at Eindhoven University of Technology ● Worked as a research fellow at Burroughs Corp. ● Moved to Austin, TX in 1984 to become a professor at the UoT ● Retired in 2000 ● Died of Cancer August 6, 2002 ● Owned only 1 computer in his lifetime (Mac) ● Produced all his famous EWD papers in his own hand or on typewriter Life

Scientific Contributions ● Djikstra's Algorithm (Shortest Path) ● Semaphore's and Multiprogramming ● Self-Stabilization ● Contributed to the development of ALGOL 60 ● 1972 Turning Award for contributions to prog. languages ● Formal verification by program derivation ● EWD series of papers (1318) ● GOTO statement considered harmful ● Effects on computer science education

Relevance to Modern Computing ● S hortest-path algorithm is used in modern network routing (OSPF) ● Laid the foundation for multiprocessing ● Self-stabilization work makes modern networks possible ● EWDs influenced program verification, defined many topics

EWD 498: How do we tell truths that might hurt? ● “Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.” ● “The tools we use have a profound (and devious!) influence on our thinking habits, and, therefore, on our thinking abilities.” ● “It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.” ● “Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.” ● “Projects promoting programming in 'natural language' are intrinsically doomed to fail.”