[appstorelottery]

> For me, it really validates that Dijkstra quote about Basic programmers being psychologically injured.

> I was a student at Northeastern (where Matthias Felleisen was a professor) from 2016-2020, so I have first-hand experience with exactly this system of teaching.

This maybe so, however you likely don't have first-hand experience with early, unstructured versions of basic to which Dijkstra was referring to in his quote. These early versions lacked control structures such as loops or even if-then-else functions. Later versions of basic evolved to support modularity, OOP, local variables and everything else. Dijkstra tended towards hyperbole and exaggeration IMHO.

[rramadass]

> Dijkstra tended towards hyperbole and exaggeration IMHO.

No.

Dijkstra being Dutch was famously blunt, vigorously contrarian, uncompromising perfectionist and extremely honest.

A summary of his life and works; The Man Who Carried Computer Science on His Shoulders - https://inference-review.com/article/the-man-who-carried-com...

[senthil_rajasek]

"... blunt, vigorously contrarian, uncompromising perfectionist and extremely honest."

Or what HR would call as "not a team player".

[rramadass]

Ha, Ha! Teamwork is vastly overrated in the Industry. Almost everything achieved by mankind is because one man put together a lot of knowledge in his own head and came up with insights. Even when they worked in Teams each man was an individual and did his own thinking.

Today "Teamwork" has come to mean playing politics, jockeying for influence, taking credit for other people's ideas and so on.

[funcDropShadow]

When was the last time anybody cared what HR had to say? I've never encountered an HR department whose primary role wasn't to indoctrinate or to create roadblocks for everybody else.

[appstorelottery]

Hyperbole: exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.

Do you really think these statements were meant to be taken literally?

"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."

Or this?

"the use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense,"

I think that saying that Dijkstra was capable of making hyperbolic statements is rather kind in this case ;-)

[rramadass]

All languages have Hyperbole to enable one to cut through noise and convey insight via forceful phrases. That is its proper use; only when it is used for mere egoistic reasons is it frowned upon.

Dijkstra was instrumental in inventing Structured Programming when Programming was literally anything goes spaghetti. This was the main reason his famous GOTO paper was such a hit. Given this background you can understand his comment about BASIC. This comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42461921 explains how bad Dartmouth BASIC was. Looked at in this light you can see how a person trying to establish structured programming might feel about that flavour of BASIC and his quote nicely captures that.

Dijkstra was also all about mathematical notation, precision and rigour. In fact the article i had linked to mentions that he was unhappy with all languages and hence taught his class at UT Austin using a language of his own design and notation. Now realize that COBOL at that time had all the unstructured faults of BASIC listed above plus an even worse handicap in that it was using Structured English rather than mathematical notation! To somebody who was all about mathematics this would be sheer torture and thus his quote.

Quote from previously linked article;

Dijkstra argued that computer programming should be taught in a radically different way. His proposal was to teach some of the elements of mathematical logic, select a small but powerful programming language, and then concentrate on the task of constructing provably correct computer programs. In his view, programs should be considered the same way as formulas, while programming should be taught as a branch of mathematics.

One should always think when reading an acknowledged great's quotes/phrases. This is not to say that they can never be wrong but this probability is generally quite low.

[anothertroll123]

So he used hyperbole at least twice. Does that mean he tended to it?

[appstorelottery]

In a rare moment of self-awareness I realise that I'm arguing on the internet.

The only point I can make is that I'm tending towards idiocy ;-)

Let us just agree with the facts: (a) I first learned to program in BASIC at 10 years old, (b) I am indeed psychologically damaged by the stigma promoted by Djikstra and (c) it's true that I struggled with pointers in C in first year university. So hey, he was probably right - both Djikstra and the OP. Honest enough for ya? ;-)

p.s. I lost two internet points trying to be Captain Defend-the-old-BASIC-programmers. Lessons learned.