Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!feeder1.hal-mli.net!weretis.net!feeder1.news.weretis.net!news.albasani.net!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Joshua Cranmer Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: Did the sort do anything? Date: Sun, 15 May 2011 22:38:34 -0400 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 18 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 02:38:34 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: mx04.eternal-september.org; posting-host="3xSaU6y5tAyBQEIxw+DaTw"; logging-data="15838"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19OcWY8Y2NnMQcWALZMnS7X6FmYTmYPYsg=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.16pre) Gecko/20110305 Lightning/1.0b3pre Thunderbird/3.1.10pre In-Reply-To: Cancel-Lock: sha1:5wFpmoS4wBibAFtcHUurSljj1tI= Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:4140 On 05/15/2011 10:28 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote: > In message, Tom > Anderson wrote: > >> Basically, Dijkstra was a brilliant guy, but a bit of a bastard. > > He was right about gotos being harmful, but I’m still not sure I understand > his remark that “computer science is no more about computers than astronomy > is about telescopes”. In Dijkstra's day, I would say that the greater focus on computer science was on the algorithmic research. At the very least, I am guessing that he did not approach computer science from a systems perspective, and instead approached it from the theory end. -- Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth