Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

   PDF

2. Stepwise Program Construction

   • Edsger W. Dijkstra

   Pages 1-14

3. Parallelism in Multi-Record Transactions

   • E. W. Dijkstra, C. S. Scholten

   Pages 15-21

4. Finding the Maximum Strong Components in a Directed Graph

   • Edsger W. Dijkstra

   Pages 22-30

5. Trip Report E. W. Dijkstra, Summer School Munich, July 25 to August 4, 1973

   • Edsger W. Dijkstra

   Pages 31-33

6. The Solution to a Cyclic Relaxation Problem

   • Edsger W. Dijkstra

   Pages 34-35

7. Trip Report IBM Seminar “Communication and Computers”, Newcastle, Sept. 1973

   • Edsger W. Dijkstra

   Pages 36-40

8. Self-Stabilization in Spite of Distributed Control

   • Edsger W. Dijkstra

   Pages 41-46

9. Acceptance Speech for the AFIPS Harry Goode Memorial Award 1974

   • Edsger W. Dijkstra

   Pages 47-49

10. Speech at the Occasion of an Anniversary

    • Edsger W. Dijkstra

    Pages 50-53

11. Inside “Mathematics Inc.”

    • Edsger W. Dijkstra

    Pages 54-55

12. A Multidisciplinary Approach to Mathematics

    • Edsger W. Dijkstra

    Pages 56-59

13. On the Role of Scientific Thought

    • Edsger W. Dijkstra

    Pages 60-66

14. A Time-Wise Hierarchy Imposed upon the Use of a Two-Level Store

    • Edsger W. Dijkstra

    Pages 67-78

15. A New Elephant Built from Mosquitoes Humming in Harmony

    • Edsger W. Dijkstra

    Pages 79-83

16. Monotonic Replacement Algorithms and Their Implementation

    • Edsger W. Dijkstra

    Pages 84-88

17. Trip Report E. W. Dijkstra, Meeting IFIP W.G.2.3, Munich, 8–14 December 1974

    • Edsger W. Dijkstra

    Pages 89-94

18. Trip Report Visit ETH Zurich, 3–4 February 1975 by E. W. Dijkstra

    • Edsger W. Dijkstra

    Pages 95-98

19. A Letter to My Old Friend Jonathan

    • Edsger W. Dijkstra

    Pages 99-103

20. “Craftsman or Scientist?”

    • Edsger W. Dijkstra

    Pages 104-109

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.

• Computing
• Hardware
• Informatik
• algorithms
• computer
• patterns
• algorithm analysis and problem complexity

• Burroughs Corporation, Nuenen, The Netherlands

  Edsger W. Dijkstra

Policies and ethics