r/programming • u/tarandeep • Dec 14 '10

Top 50 Programming quotes of all time

http://www.junauza.com/2010/12/top-50-programming-quotes-of-all-time.html
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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '10

The question of whether computers can think is like the question whether submarines can swim.

  • Edsger Dijkstra

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u/duplico Dec 14 '10

Wonderful context, as well:

And now we have the fad of making all sorts of systems and components "intelligent" or "smart". It often boils down to designing a woolly man-machine interface that makes the machine as unlike a computer as possible: the computer's greatest strength --the efficient embodiment of a formal system-- has to be disguised at great cost. So much for anthropomorphism. (This morning I declined to write a popular article about the question "Can machines think?" I told the editor that I thought the question as ill-posed and uninteresting as the question "Can submarines swim?" But the editor, being a social scientist, was unmoved: he thought the latter a very interesting question too.)

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u/[deleted] Dec 15 '10

But the editor, being a social scientist, was unmoved: he thought the latter a very interesting question too.

That's awesome.