A Quote by Edsger Dijkstra

A programming language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits.

Edsger Dijkstra

Quote Topics

Habits Influence Language Our Profound Programming Thinking Tool

Quote Author

Edsger Dijkstra
Dutch - Scientist
May 11, 1930 - August 6, 2002

A most important, but also most elusive, aspect of any tool is its influence on the habits of those who train themselves in its use. If the tool is a programming language this influence is, whether we like it or not, an influence on our thinking habits.... A programming language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits.

Edsger Dijkstra

The tools we use have a profound and devious influence on our thinking habits, and therefore on our thinking abilities.

Edsger Dijkstra

A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.

Alan Perlis

A programming language is like a natural, human language in that it favors certain methaphors, images, and ways of thinking.

Seymour Papert

My being a teacher had a decisive influence on making language and systems as simple as possible so that in my teaching, I could concentrate on the essential issues of programming rather than on details of language and notation.

Niklaus Wirth

It is so much easier to rest contented with what we have already acquired than to change ever so slightly those routine but profound habits of thought and feeling which govern our life, and by which we live so blissfully. This mental inertia is, perhaps, our greatest enemy. Insidiously it leads us to assume that we can renew our lives without renewing our habits.

Nadia Boulanger

Language and culture cannot be separated. Language is vital to understanding our unique cultural perspectives. Language is a tool that is used to explore and experience our cultures and the perspectives that are embedded in our cultures.

Buffy Sainte-Marie

I think that great programming is not all that dissimilar to great art. Once you start thinking in concepts of programming it makes you a better person...as does learning a foreign language, as does learning math, as does learning how to read.

Jack Dorsey

I don't know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language [...] I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way.

Rasmus Lerdorf

The properties of executability and universality associated with programming languages can be combined, in a single language, with the well-known properties of mathematical notation which make it such an effective tool of thought.

Kenneth E. Iverson

Language is the writer's only tool - we really don't have anything else - but our language contains within it our entire experience of the world.

Alice McDermott

When marketers influence habits, they influence peoples' self-identity. And so when a group or company does something that doesn't correspond to our core values, it feels like a betrayal.

Charles Duhigg

The ALGOL compiler was probably one of the nicest pieces of code to come out at that time. I spent hours trying to fix and change the compiler. Working with it so closely affected the way I think about programming and had a profound influence on my style.

Gary Kildall

Yoga breathing control is practiced to influence our thinking. The lungs correspond to our fore brain and can influence our consciousness.

Michio Kushi

Thinking is the great enemy of perfection. The habit of profound reflection, I am compelled to say, is the most pernicious of all the habits formed by civilized man.