Edsger W. Dijkstra is arguably the first Dutch 'programmer', having studied mathematics and physics at university, followed by theoretical physics. Edsger W. Dijkstra is considered to be one of the most influential researchers in the field of mathematics and computational science.
His achievements have long been reflected in his career, and in 1972 he was awarded the ACM Turing Award, the highest honour in computing science.
In addition, he received many other awards and honours over a period of 30 years
Dijkstra's designs are elegant, educational, inspiring and very useful to the practicing programmer. What can be said is that his influence on programming is more universal than any glossary.
He also had a different approach to teaching computing. He once joked that "when we give advice to young people, we have to be very careful: sometimes they follow it!" He developed the structured programming paradigm for writing computer programs. He and Dutch computer scientist Jaap A. Zonnefeld developed the first compiler for the ALGOL-60 programming language. He was also one of the early pioneers of distributed computing research.
Dijkstra's Zip-fastener algorithm, first used in the early Algol compilers to map two-dimensional arrays onto secondary storage, is increasingly relevant when manipulating large images in today's virtual, paged, cached main memory.
Dijkstra was a colourful - if sometimes difficult and stubborn - and respected person.
Dijkstra once joked that you could hardly blame MIT for not noticing an unassuming computer scientist in a small Dutch town. You can see his positive and optimistic outlook
But his influence on programming is more pervasive than any glossary could suggest. He believed that "data travels through a computer system like blood through the ventricles of the heart"
Twenty minutes, if that's what you think of during a coffee shop break, might be spent in small talk with others, but Dijkstra and his fiancée Maria (Ria) were relaxing on a cafe terrace in the Netherlands when after only a few moments of revelation he came up with a solution to the shortest path problem: what is the shortest route between two given cities, given the network of roads connecting them. And it only took 20 minutes!
Dijkstra, E.W. (1972) “The humble programmer,” Communications of the ACM, 15(10), pp. 859–866. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/355604.361591.
Edsger W. Dijkstra: Brilliant, colourful, and opinionated (no date) CWI. Available at: https://www.cwi.nl/about/history/e-w-dijkstra-brilliant-colourful-and-opinionated (Accessed: November 2, 2022).
Shearing, B. (2003) “Tribute to Edsger W. Dijkstra,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 25(1), pp. 67–69. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1109/mahc.2003.1179892.
© 2022 Yahui Zhang 22104029