Teaching COBOL ought to be regarded as a criminal act.

- Edsger Dijkstra

Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!

- Edsger Dijkstra

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.

- Edsger Dijkstra

If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.

- Edsger Dijkstra

The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.

- Edsger Dijkstra

Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California.

- Edsger Dijkstra

Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated.

- Edsger Dijkstra

Perfecting oneself is as much unlearning as it is learning.

- Edsger Dijkstra

If you want more effective programmers, you will discover that they should not waste their time debugging, they should not introduce the bugs to star…

- Edsger Dijkstra