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Alan Kay on Dijkstra

vermilyer · 19.6K views · 2011-06-07 · 2:39

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Overview

A short clip of Alan Kay commenting on Edsger Dijkstra in a humorous, pointed way.

On Hacker News

HN links it as a joke in threads about Dijkstra's writings, not as a recommendation.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2016–2020

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What people said

dshep · 2020-09 · Joke / meme

For better or worst, reading Dijkstra always reminds of these funny (I think) comments that Alan Kay made in 1997... "Arrogance in Computer Science is measured in nano-Dijkstras" --Alan Kay Video: [VIDEO]

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jimhefferon · 2020-07 · Joke / meme

"Arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstra's" - Alan Kay ( [VIDEO] ) (I usually like Dijkstra's works but the quote does make a person smile.)

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elcapitan · 2016-01 · Joke / meme

Not advocating Alan Kay's view on Dijkstra here, but his answer to this is still very funny: [VIDEO] "You may know that arrogance in computer science is measured in Nano-Dijkstras. [..] I wrote a rebuttal paper just named 'On the fact that most software in the world is written on one side of the Atlantic'."

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Sources

Video by vermilyer, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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