Top Ten Lies of Engineers (by Guy Kawasaki)

[Epee_Pox]

Think 'software engineer'

"software engineering" is to engineering as "political science" is to science.

[needle]

"software engineering" is to engineering as "political science" is to science.

Dijkstra said it better: "Computer science is as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes"

[lemon__fresh]

"software engineering" is to engineering as "political science" is to science.

WRONG!

[lemon__fresh]

Dijkstra said it better: "Computer science is as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes"

there is definatley some truth to that

[jeff]

As long as this thread is awakened from slumber:

The Devil's IT Dictionary, at http://www.isham-research.co.uk/dd.html

For Dijkstra, I like his remark "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."

[needle]

Two quotes from Dijkstra I learned in the very first lecture on programming (damn, that was 23 years ago):

• "Programmer's qualification is inversely proportional to the number of GOTO statements in his code"
• "When you think you found the last bug in your code, know that there's at least one more"

And for those with advance age and long memories:
When Egorov asked Dijkstra what he though about US DoD decision to make Ada their programming language of choice: "If Soviet army made the same decision I would feel much better about the world peace"

[jeff]

This from a man so interested in personal productivity that he wrote all his missives in longhand. With a fountain pen. With ink he ground from an ink-stone himself... Great and a pioneer, but flawed... Fantastic source for pithy comments, some of which are flatly wrong, but fun to read anyway

[needle]

With a fountain pen

Now that's something I agree with. After years of torture by writing with ballpoint pens I went back to real ink. These days I use only fountain pens and gel pens - takes less pressure on the paper (read faster writing and less wrist fatigue) and allows MUCH better handwriting as added bonus.
Grinding one's own ink - sounds like fun, but I'm way to lazy; I let Levenger do it for me

I agree that some of Dijkstra's comments are wrong, but still incredibly witty. I also recall something about object-oriented programming as a concept that could only come from California (don't remember exact wording)

[jeff]

It wasn't fountain pen vs. ballpoint - it was "I refuse to use a keyboard and type"! He wouldn't even accept papers prepared via word processors. That's pretty Luddite for a great computer scientist.

The quote is almost as you had it: "Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California.", from http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/rpg/...s/dijkstra.htm He was wrong there, too. (I remember a long diatribe he went on about how the IBM mainframe couldn't work because of how it did interrupt processing. His entire argument was based, sadly, on him not understanding what he was describing, and getting it completely wrong.)

A great man, but flawed.