Aucbarpa.1280 net.followup utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!G:ARPAVAX:arnold Fri May 7 13:31:52 1982 Re: Dr. Dijkstra speaks... I, too, don't like his tendency to think what he says is the "TRUTH" However, the thing which nicked my (besides his statement about CS=Math since I'm a fairly poor mathematician, but consider myself a good programmer) was his statement that anthropomorhpism was the sign of professional immaturity. Surely to take anthropomorphism seriously is not a good idea, but to use it as a method of discussion is no more "immature" than it was for ship captains to refer to their ships as "she" instead of "it". Most people I know use anthropomorphic terms interchangibly with more "realistic" terms on a wide variety of objects, not only computers. It is a natural process of human thought, and to judge people by it is, to me, the sign of emotional immaturity, akin to judging a programmer by the posture they use while typing. The people I know who are the best in this (and any other) field are those who enjoy it, and stodgy "professionalism" attitude is, in my experience, held by the minority, not the majority, of them. Ken ~e ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.