Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> "Go to considered harmful."
>>
>> I must say, I love how steampunk he sounds.
> 
> With a name like "Edsger W. Dijkstra", I'm guessing English isn't his 
> first language.

Yes, I had considered that as well. He still gives a lovely victorian 
wording to high-tech building-automated-machinery, hence my observation.

> I don't pretend to know much about history. It just seems fairly 
> self-evident that having formally organised stuff makes it easier to 
> comprehend than unorganised stuff. 

Dijkstra is one of the few who figured out what "formally organized" means 
for imperative computer programs. He's the one who figured out how you can 
look at a program and say "this one will be easy to understand because it is 
well organized, and that one will be difficult because it is not well 
organized."  Indeed, "formally organized" is what he's defining in that paper.

>> Did you look at that link I posted about the semantics of programming
>> langauges?
> 
> When?

Probably a couple weeks back. Let me see if I can find it again.

Ah. There. 
http://web.archive.org/web/20040410154109/cs.wwc.edu/~aabyan/PLBook/HTML/Semantics.html


-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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