Item — HN Reader

Spheres with uniform density behave exactly the same as mass dots.

Mathematicians can cook up giant numbers without blinking, like Graham's number. If that makes anyone feel good, then good for them. Somehow, all the quotes I read from Dijkstra leave an arrogant after-taste in my mouth.

1 comments

Nice try, Alan Kay! <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7ROTJKkhuI>;

(For those who don't feel like watching: "Arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.")

As a Dijkstra fan myself, though, I feel duty-bound to emphasize that condemning a claim as having been stated by an arrogant man is just a somewhat more subtle way of stating an ad hominem fallacy.

I don't think he's using the nano-Dijkstras comment as an argument, but as a side joke. He refutes Dijkstras on empirical grounds: the US way of programming got the job done, as illustrated by the fact that most of the software in the world was being produced there.

I think Kay's US-vs-EUR comparison is largely inappropriate regardless because Dijkstra had long been writing his missives from Texas.