"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."
~ Djikstra
As the power of available machines grew by a factor of more than a thousand, society's ambition to apply these machines grew in proportion, and it was the poor programmer who found his job in this exploded field of tension between ends and means. The increased power of the hardware, together with the perhaps even more dramatic increase in its reliability, made solutions feasible that the programmer had not dared to dream about a few years before. And now, a few years later, he had to dream about them and, even worse, he had to transform such dreams into reality! Is it a wonder that we found ourselves in a software crisis?
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offence.
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.
In the good old days physicists repeated each other's experiments, just
to be sure. Today they stick to FORTRAN, so that they can share each
other's programs, bugs included.
By claiming that they can contribute to software engineering, the soft
scientists make themselves even more ridiculous. (Not less dangerous,
alas!) In spite of its name, software engineering requires (cruelly)
hard science for its support.
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.
Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of
one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.
