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E.W.Dijkstra Archive

E.W.Dijkstra Archive

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·December 21, 2025
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coderatlarge

what a charming time it was when that generation discovered a bunch of stuff that now undergirds daily life:

“ Dijkstra always believed it a scientist’s duty to maintain a lively correspondence with his scientific colleagues. To a greater extent than most of us, he put that conviction into practice. For over four decades, he mailed copies of his consecutively numbered technical notes, trip reports, insightful observations, and pungent commentaries, known collectively as “EWDs”, to several dozen recipients in academia and industry. Thanks to the ubiquity of the photocopier and the wide interest in Dijkstra’s writings, the informal circulation of many of the EWDs eventually reached into the thousands. “

random sample of a trip note in which he is in ited to consult on a project that he thinks ought to be killed:

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd06xx/EWD601.PDF

fghiop

> ... cannot be expected from the average programmer

Ha! He had to deal with the political B.S. of well-spoken self-important people who spend excessively long and write excessively long code/proofs getting accolades over those that just get things done in the best way! I feel for him!