[Haskell-cafe] Truly Really Off-topic: (Was: Mathematics)

[Gwern Branwen]

On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 11:47 AM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> As well, in no Google hit did I find any specific citation to
> Dijkstra. Hence, I conclude that because it is insightful and sounds
> like Dijkstra (eg. his submarine quote), it has become apocryphally
> associated with him but is *not* actually a Dijkstra quote.

To follow up:

- 'telescopes' does not appear anywhere in the EWDs:
http://ewd.cs.utexas.edu.master.com/texis/master/search/?sufs=0&q=telescopes&xsubmit=Search&s=SS
- Ruud Koot points to an August* 1993 PhD thesis
(http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.53.8045&rep=rep1&type=pdf)
which attributes it, with no citation or sourcing information, to
Dijkstra
- a Redditor claims, with no citation or sourcing information, that it
was Marvin Minsky
(http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/jy1zw/psa_dijkstra_did_not_say_computer_science_is_no/c2g17xt)

* that is, well after the original January 1993 article

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net