[kazinator]

I don't know of evidence that he did. But Dijkstra left us a famous quote:

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

This is obviously a compliment; it even mentions that word.

Even a less positive remark than this would still be resounding compliment from a computer scientist who said things such as that BASIC causes irreparable brain damage!

So count this as a piece of evidence that he liked Lisp.

Lisp emphasizes structured approaches, and from the start it has encouraged (though not required) techniques which avoid destructive manipulation. There is a lot in Lisp to appeal to someone with a mindset similar to Dijkstra.

[personalityson]

"I must confess that I was very slow on appreciating LISP’s merits. My first introduction was via a paper that defined the semantics of LISP in terms of LISP, I did not see how that could make sense, I rejected the paper and LISP with it."

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD12xx/EWD128...

[kazinator]

Even McCarthy initially rejected the idea that the Lisp-in-Lisp specification could simply be translated into working code so that an interpreter pops out; at first he thought Steve Russel was misunderstanding something.