The thing that always strikes me when I read Dijkstra's writings on languages is that in the context of present-day discourse, he comes across as a massive troll. He rarely gives any in-place justification for his outrageous use of insulting and attacking language.
I realise some of this is explained by the fact that a lot of this stuff was written for consumption by people who were already aware of him and his ideas, other people at various institutions with him. However this begs the question, if your target audience is already so aware of your unusual ideas that you do not feel the need to provide any kind of context or justification, why moan so loudly at all? I'd love to see some of his colleagues reactions of the time to some of these tracts.
I guess when you're that far into the right-hand crevice of the intelligence bellcurve, you're going to fall into the outer quartiles for quite a lot of other psychometrics as well.
He was a troll back then, too. Alan Kay used to joke that arrogance in computer science is measured in nanodijkstras. EWD could back it up because he was a genius, but it didn't win him friends.
Either way, some of the aphorisms are less defensible now. 35 years later, if something so broadly useful as programming remains "one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics", then I think we have failed our responsibility to move the science forward.
I realise some of this is explained by the fact that a lot of this stuff was written for consumption by people who were already aware of him and his ideas, other people at various institutions with him. However this begs the question, if your target audience is already so aware of your unusual ideas that you do not feel the need to provide any kind of context or justification, why moan so loudly at all? I'd love to see some of his colleagues reactions of the time to some of these tracts.
I guess when you're that far into the right-hand crevice of the intelligence bellcurve, you're going to fall into the outer quartiles for quite a lot of other psychometrics as well.