Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective

Edsger W. Dijkstra

Springer Science & Business Media, Dec 6, 2012 - Computers - 362 pages

Since the summer of 1973, when I became a Burroughs Research Fellow, my life has been very different from what it had been before. The daily routine changed: instead of going to the University each day, where I used to spend most of my time in the company of others, I now went there only one day a week and was most of the time -that is, when not travelling!- alone in my study. In my solitude, mail and the written word in general became more and more important. The circumstance that my employer and I had the Atlantic Ocean between us was a further incentive to keep a fairly complete record of what I was doing. The public part of that output found its place in what became known as "the EWD series", which can be viewed as a form of scientific correspondence, possible since the advent of the copier. (That same copier makes it hard to estimate its actual distribution: I myself made about two dozen copies of my texts, but their recipients were welcome to act as further nodes of the distribution tree. ) The decision to publish a se1ection from the EWD series in book form was at first highly embarrassing, but as the months went by I got used to the idea. As soon as some guiding principles had been adopted -preferably not published elsewhere, as varied and as representative as possible, etc.

Contents

• EWD227 Stepwise Program Construction: 1
• EWD338 Parallelism in MultiRecord Transactions: 15
• EWD376 Finding the Maximum Strong Components in: 22
• EWD385 Trip Report E W Dijkstra Summer School Munich: 31
• EWD391 SelfStabilization in Spite of Distributed Control: 41
• EWD407 Acceptance Speech for the AFIPS Harry Goode: 47
• EWD427: 50
• See EWD427 Those former members of the IFIP Working Group 2 1 who: 56
• EWD462: 67
• EWD464 A New Elephant Built from Mosquitoes Humming: 79
• EWD466 Trip Report E W Dijkstra Meeting IFIP W G 2 3: 89
• EWD474 Trip Report Visit ETH Zurich 34 February 1975: 95
• EWD480 Craftsman or Scientist?: 104
• This speech was delivered at the Conference Luncheon Tuesday May 7 1974: 109
• EWD482 Exercises in Making Programs Robust: 110
• EWD494 Trip Report E W Dijkstra 16th April7th May: 120
• EWD498 How Do We Tell Truths that Might Hurt?: 129
• EWD503 A PostScriptum to EWD501: 141
• EWD508 A Synthesis Emerging?: 147
• EWD512 Comments at a Symposium: 161
• EWD525 On a Warning from E A Hauck: 169
• EWD539 Mathematics Inc a Private Letter from Its Chairman: 184
• EWD561 A Non Trip Report from E W Dijkstra: 200
• EWD570 An Exercise for Dr R M Burstall: 215
• EWD577 Trip Report E W Dijkstra ECIConference: 225
• 54: 232
• EWD582 A Proof of a Theorem Communicated to: 233
• EWD585 Trip Report E W Dijkstra Tokyo 28 Sept 3 Oct 1976: 245
• EWD594 A Parable: 251
• EWD611 On the Fact that the Atlantic Ocean Has Two Sides: 268
• EWD613 Trip Report E W Dijkstra Australia: 277
• Why I Proved: 284
• EWD622 On Making Solutions More and More FineGrained: 292
• EWD623 The Mathematics Behind the Bankers Algorithm: 308
• EWD635 Trip Report E W Dijkstra NewcastleuponTyne: 319
• EWD637 The Three Golden Rules for Successful Scientific: 329
• This text is almost as painful to read as it was to write And that is exactly: 337
• EWD648 Why Is Software So Expensive?: 338
• EWD650 A Theorem About Odd Powers of Odd Integers: 349
• EWD673 On Weak and Strong Termination: 355

Bibliographic information

• Title: Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective; Monographs in Computer Science
• Author: Edsger W. Dijkstra
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media, 2012
• ISBN: 146125695X, 9781461256953
• Length: 362 pages
• Subjects: Computers / Computer Science; Computers / Information Technology; Computers / Machine Theory; Computers / Programming / Algorithms