Edsger Dijkstra Quotes
If in physics there's something you don't understand, you can always hide behind the uncharted depths of nature. You can always blame God. You didn't make it so complex yourself. But if your program doesn't work, there is no one to hide behind. You cannot hide behind an obstinate nature. If it doesn't work, you've messed up.
Dijkstra, Edsger W. Interview by Philip L. Frana. Oral History Interview with Edsger W. Dijkstra, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, 2 Aug. 2001, p. 15.
This is a very important quotation for government officials because the time to complete modern digital tech projects are impossible to determine beforehand. It is only when one is well into the project and in many cases almost finished, that the technologists can accurately predict the finish date. The 2013 rollout of the computer system for Obama Care signup was one of the great examples.
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra was a Dutch computer scientist, programmer, software engineer, systems scientist, science essayist, and pioneer in computing science. A theoretical physicist by training, he worked as a programmer at the Mathematisch Centrum (Amsterdam) from 1952 to 1962. A university professor for much of his life, Dijkstra held the Schlumberger Centennial Chair in Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin from 1984 until his retirement in 1999. He was a professor of mathematics at the Eindhoven University of Technology (1962–1984) and a research fellow at the Burroughs Corporation (1973–1984). In 1972, he became the first non-American, non-British, and continental European winner of the Turing Award.
