readme:james's blog

I said I'd find some more things Dijkstra said about different languages. This turned out to be easier than expected, because Wikipedia already has a list. And, of course, there's no reason to do any more research if you've read a Wikipedia article, is there?

Anyway, here are some of them:

• The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.
• APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.
• FORTRAN, 'the infantile disorder', by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
• And everybody's favourite: It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.

# posted by James @ 10:38 PM