Dear computing comrades,
Today, i'd like to show you a piece of literature written by a eminent
mathematician Edsger W Dijkstra.
Here's 2 interesting quote from his letter:
“The prevaling attitude was reflected in the creation of two literary
figures — admittedly of rather poor literature, but nevertheless of
great paralyzing power —, viz. “the average programmer” and “the
casual user”. Up to these days, academic research in programming
methodology has been supposed to respect the severe intellectual
limitations of these fictitious morons: consequently any proposal that
required any further education of the programming person was out.”
“... On the other hand we should be glad that the gospel of design by
derivation rather by trial and error is still preached.”
I happened to read it today. And, i think in your busy schedule of
checking out slashdot and blogging and driveling with your excitement
and concerns about current fashions and trends with your fellow peers
and factions; It is good once in a while to read something
unfashionable and not for-dummies.
This letter of EWD is about 16 pages.
Is somewhat a quaint rant. The first half i find interesting but
without much sympathy, perhaps because the author is mostly talking
about the situation in the mid 1990s, of which, i'm unfamiliar and too
early a period to touch me personally. But the latter part of the
letter, i find much empathy and concurrence. In particular, his
remarks related to the formal methods.
(for you math illiterates out there: the “formal” here does not mean
the opposite of “informal”, as in “formal dress” vs “informal dress”.
Rather, “formal” here means “mathematical reasoning by symbol
manipulation; the ‘FORM’ in math FORMulas”. (for you mathematicians
out there: the root of the word “formal” as in “formal dress” and
“formalism”, actually are the same. They both refers to “form” as in a
empty shell, appearance.)) (So, when you “dress up formally” to attend
your friend's wedding or death ceremony, it literally means you are
putting on a appearance.)
Now, without further ado, the article is at:
“Under the spell of Leibniz's dream” (2000) By Edsger W Dijkstra
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd12xx/EWD1298.PDF
Xah
···@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/
On 20 Aug., 01:56, Xah Lee <····@xahlee.org> wrote:
> (for you math illiterates out there: ...
> (for you mathematicians out there: ...
Please, Xah Lee, could you possibly stop to "explain" things that are
absolutely trivial? If somebody has doubts about the etymology of a
word, he may use the dictionary, or he could ask.
Ingo Menger wrote:
> On 20 Aug., 01:56, Xah Lee <····@xahlee.org> wrote:
>
>> (for you math illiterates out there: ...
>> (for you mathematicians out there: ...
>
> Please, Xah Lee, could you possibly stop to "explain" things that are
> absolutely trivial? If somebody has doubts about the etymology of a
> word, he may use the dictionary, or he could ask.
>
>
I used usenet years ago then stopped for couple of years. I remember
seeing him/her on c.l.perl I believe doing the same thing he/she is
doing atm. I'd say the ultimate usenet superstar. Wow!
From: Matthias Buelow
Subject: Re: Xah's Edu Corner: Under the spell of Leibniz's dream
Date:
Message-ID: <5j4rrfF3s3h2rU1@mid.dfncis.de>
In comp.lang.lisp Bikal KC <·················@yahoo.ca> wrote:
> I used usenet years ago then stopped for couple of years. I remember
> seeing him/her on c.l.perl I believe doing the same thing he/she is
> doing atm. I'd say the ultimate usenet superstar. Wow!
I think it's some (probably mild) form of autism.
No offense intended, Xah.
On Aug 23, 3:38 am, Matthias Buelow <····@incubus.de> wrote:
> In comp.lang.lisp Bikal KC <·················@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> > I used usenet years ago then stopped for couple of years. I remember
> > seeing him/her on c.l.perl I believe doing the same thing he/she is
> > doing atm. I'd say the ultimate usenet superstar. Wow!
>
> I think it's some (probably mild) form of autism.
> No offense intended, Xah.
Yeah, yeah, that's what they all say, especially when they do that
most-common of usenet things -- insult your mental health and tone it
as if it were a very compassionate and understanding suggestion to
seek medical treatment rather than the flame that it is. :P
On Aug 19, 7:56 pm, Xah Lee <····@xahlee.org> wrote:
> So, when you "dress up formally" to attend your friend's wedding...
Oh dear God, please *don't* remind me.
> "Under the spell of Leibniz's dream" (2000) By Edsger W Dijkstrahttp://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd12xx/EWD1298.PDF
A link to a copy in a non-toxic format would be nice.
Twisted wrote:
> On Aug 19, 7:56 pm, Xah Lee <····@xahlee.org> wrote:
>> "Under the spell of Leibniz's dream" (2000) By Edsger W Dijkstrahttp://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd12xx/EWD1298.PDF
>
> A link to a copy in a non-toxic format would be nice.
Have you read the PDF spec? Tried a recent version of xpdf/kpdf?
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html
If that's toxic...
you could try pdf2ps or get the HTML version:
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/index12xx.html
- Daniel
Twisted <··········@gmail.com> wrote:
+---------------
| > "Under the spell of Leibniz's dream" (2000) By Edsger W
| > Dijkstrahttp://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd12xx/EWD1298.PDF
|
| A link to a copy in a non-toxic format would be nice.
+---------------
Well, the fact of the matter is that the bulk of Dijkstra's
"EWD" papers were written *long* before the web existed, typed
on a favorite manual typewriter which he continued using for the
remainder of his professional life. <http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/>
has more details on the more than one thousand "EWD"s he wrote.
Until very recently, the *only* source for these documents was
either in hardback technical books (for the few that were published)
or in the PDF bitmaps of scans of the original manually-typed pages,
which the University of Texas at Austin has generously made [and
even after Dijkstra's death continues to make] available on-line.
However, a *few* but "growing number of the PDF bitmap documents
have been transcribed to make them searchable and accessible to
visitors who are visually impaired." If you would care to volunteer
[as over sixty others have done] to contribute to the transcriptions,
see <http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/invitation.html>.
Otherwise, just count your blessings that these gems are available
at all...
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock <····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
From: Albert Y. C. Lai
Subject: Re: Xah's Edu Corner: Under the spell of Leibniz's dream
Date:
Message-ID: <fad46v02kb8@news3.newsguy.com>
Twisted wrote:
> A link to a copy in a non-toxic format would be nice.
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD12xx/EWD1298.html
Xah Lee wrote:
«“Under the spell of Leibniz's dream” (2000) By Edsger W Dijkstra
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd12xx/EWD1298.PDF
»
For those who had interest in this article... here's some addendum
related to my personal development on this subject.
In the past few weeks, i have clarified some math foundational
subjects that have confused me for the past decade. Specifically, now
i understand the relations between formalism, logicism, and math
notations. And, i also clarified a confusion i had for a decade about
“predicate” in logic and “predicate” in computer languages. Lastly, i
discovered that there is a whole academic community who had the same
confusion and dissatisfaction i had, and a notable leader in this
community is EWD!
For the detail, see:
The Codification of Mathematics
http://xahlee.org/cmaci/notation/math_codify.html
(in particular, the pink sections)
MUCH thanks to Wikipedia! Incredible resource. (note, to give a
context here of on this stated opinion: i have been reading
encyclopedias obsessively since the early 1990s. Despite all the
encyclopedia readings related to math subjects i've done in the past,
Wikipedia today surpassed them all in breath and in depth, generally
speaking. (i'd say that wikipedia today even surpassed the
professional reference “Encyclopedic Dictionary of
Mathematics” (1987). ))
PS i've also transcribed:
“How Computing Science created a new mathematical style”.
(1990) By Edsger W Dijkstra.
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd10xx/EWD1073.PDF
Hopefully it should show up on the site soon.
Xah
···@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/