> Maybe, given the lens, I've not given Dijkstra a proper chance to demonstrate a more positive attitude, so I'm open to any suggestions of writings where he doesn't seem like such a grump.

Kinda hard to find where Dijkstra praised something (except Algol 60).

One funny example: he called FORTRAN "an infantile disorder", though he said this about the team behind it: "At that time this was a project of great temerity and the people responsible for it deserve our great admiration.".

On LISP: "LISP has jokingly been described as 'the most intelligent way to misuse a computer'. I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts."

Alan Kay on Dijkstra: "Arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-dijkstras."

Your comments on Dijkstra are blasphemous ;-)

I often see a lot of folks here on HN who are too eager to pass judgement on Dijkstra without having read and understood his writings nor giving much thought to the context and times which shaped his thinking. All of his opinions should be thought over and appropriately adapted for use in our context. He was a wide-ranging polymath philosopher (technical and non-technical) with a laser-like focus on exactitude using Mathematics. Radical approaches must be pushed, particularly when they are hard/difficult to learn and understand. If his language was biting, then it was so much the better for promulgating his cause viz. "correctness over easy", "mathematical reasoning underpinning everything", "structure in aid of the previous", "proper language syntax/design in aid of the previous" etc.

As an example; read EWD 1036: On the cruelty of really teaching computing science (https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD103...) in entirety and carefully. The thesis is that computing is "radically novel" from other forms of human endeavour and hence it cannot be taught by simplifying to known analogues and adhoc procedural operations. You need the rigor and exactitude of Mathematical Logic to build a "Scientific" basis.

Excerpts:

... What is a program? ... I prefer to describe it the other way round: the program is an abstract symbol manipulator, which can be turned into a concrete one by supplying a computer to it. After all, it is no longer the purpose of programs to instruct our machines; these days, it is the purpose of machines to execute our programs.

So, we have to design abstract symbol manipulators. We all know what they look like: they look like programs or —to use somewhat more general terminology— usually rather elaborate formulae from some formal system. It really helps to view a program as a formula. Firstly, it puts the programmer's task in the proper perspective: he has to derive that formula. Secondly, it explains why the world of mathematics all but ignored the programming challenge: programs were so much longer formulae than it was used to that it did not even recognize them as such. Now back to the programmer's job: he has to derive that formula, he has to derive that program. We know of only one reliable way of doing that, viz. by means of symbol manipulation. And now the circle is closed: we construct our mechanical symbol manipulators by means of human symbol manipulation.

...The point to get across is that if we have to demonstrate something about all the elements of a large set, it is hopelessly inefficient to deal with all the elements of the set individually: the efficient argument does not refer to individual elements at all and is carried out in terms of the set's definition.

...

Back to programming. The statement that a given program meets a certain specification amounts to a statement about all computations that could take place under control of that given program. And since this set of computations is defined by the given program, our recent moral says: deal with all computations possible under control of a given program by ignoring them and working with the program. We must learn to work with program texts while (temporarily) ignoring that they admit the interpretation of executable code.

Another way of saying the same thing is the following one. A programming language, with its formal syntax and with the proof rules that define its semantics, is a formal system for which program execution provides only a model. It is well-known that formal systems should be dealt with in their own right, and not in terms of a specific model. And, again, the corollary is that we should reason about programs without even mentioning their possible "behaviours".

... a program is no more than half a conjecture. The other half of the conjecture is the functional specification the program is supposed to satisfy. The programmer's task is to present such complete conjectures as proven theorems.

He then goes on to describe the importance of teaching Predicate Calculus via a simple imperative language where its semantics are given by proof rules. This language is described in EWD 472: Guarded commands, non-determinacy and formal derivation of programs - https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD04xx/EWD472... There is no compiler for this language and so the student is forced to implement the program and its proof by hand. However this radical approach is not being accepted by educationists/industry.

He concludes;

Teaching to unsuspecting youngsters the effective use of formal methods is one of the joys of life because it is so extremely rewarding. Within a few months, they find their way in a new world with a justified degree of confidence that is radically novel for them; within a few months, their concept of intellectual culture has acquired a radically novel dimension. To my taste and style, that is what education is about. Universities should not be afraid of teaching radical novelties; on the contrary, it is their calling to welcome the opportunity to do so. Their willingness to do so is our main safeguard against dictatorships, be they of the proletariat, of the scientific establishment, or of the corporate elite.