<story><title>An extensive letter from Edsger Dijkstra to my 19 year old self (1989)</title><url>https://mastodon.online/@raph/109547934082265439</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ryloric</author><text>Whenever I come across some new AI hype thing in the wild with the usual buzzwords, a sentence Dijkstra wrote way back sort of flashes through my head. It always reminds me to be careful and precise with words.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;...the question of whether Machines Can Think, a question of which we now know that it is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;In the same &amp;quot;post&amp;quot; he also talks a lot about hype and how it hurts the field. The last few years of computing have been exceptionally hype driven, even more than usual. We could&amp;#x27;ve been better with a few more critics like him in that period.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cs.utexas.edu&amp;#x2F;~EWD&amp;#x2F;ewd08xx&amp;#x2F;EWD898.PDF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cs.utexas.edu&amp;#x2F;~EWD&amp;#x2F;ewd08xx&amp;#x2F;EWD898.PDF&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>An extensive letter from Edsger Dijkstra to my 19 year old self (1989)</title><url>https://mastodon.online/@raph/109547934082265439</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mberning</author><text>I know for myself it is very refreshing when a young person comes to you with question or problem that they have clearly spent a lot of time on. It certainly motivates me to provide detailed and extensive feedback. In the industry you unfortunately end up answering the same “dumb” questions ad nauseam. When something different comes along it is a joy.</text></comment>