On The Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer Science

On The Cruelty Of Really Teaching Computer Science

On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computing Science” is a 1988 paper by E. W. Dijkstra which argues that computer programming should be understood as a branch of mathematics, and that the formal provability of a program is a major criterion for correctness.

Despite the title, most of the article is on Dijkstra’s attempt to put computer science into a wider perspective within science, teaching being addressed as a corollary at the end. Specifically, Dijkstra made a “proposal for an introductory programming course for freshmen” that consisted of Hoare logic as an uninterpreted formal system.

Read more about On The Cruelty Of Really Teaching Computer Science:  Debate Over Feasibility, Pedagogical Legacy

Famous quotes containing the words cruelty, teaching, computer and/or science:

    I love something: and scarcely do I love it completely when the tyrant in me says: “I want that in sacrifice.” This cruelty is in my entrails. Behold! I am evil.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

    ... teaching to me was anathema, chiefly because it would condemn me to a world of petticoats.
    Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)

    The computer takes up where psychoanalysis left off. It takes the ideas of a decentered self and makes it more concrete by modeling mind as a multiprocessing machine.
    Sherry Turkle (b. 1948)

    He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars:
    General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer,
    For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.
    William Blake (1757–1827)