University of Virginia, Department of Computer Science
CS655: Programming Languages
Spring 2000

How do we tell truths that might hurt?

Edsger W.Dijkstra, 18 June 1975
from http://www.cbi.umn.edu/inv/burros/ewd498.htm

Sometimes we discover unpleasant truths. Whenever we do so, we are in difficulties: suppressing them is scientifically dishonest, so we must tell them, but telling them, however, will fire back on us. If the truths are sufficiently impalatable, our audience is psychically incapable of accepting them and we will be written off as totally unrealistic, hopelessly idealistic, dangerously revolutionary, foolishly gullible or what have you. (Besides that, telling such truths is a sure way of making oneself unpopular in many circles, and, as such, it is an act that, in general, is not without personal risks. Vide Galileo Galilei.....)

Computing Science seems to suffer severely from this conflict. On the whole, it remains silent and tries to escape this conflict by shifting its attention. (For instance: with respect to COBOL you can really do only one of two things: fight the disease or pretend that it does not exist. Most Computer Science Departments have opted for the latter easy way out.) But, Brethern, I ask you: is this honest? Is not our prolonged silence fretting away Computing Science's intellectual integrity? Are we decent by remaining silent? If not, how do we speak up?

To give you some idea of the scope of the problem I have listed a number of such truths. (Nearly all computing scientists I know well will agree without hesitation to nearly all of them. Yet we allow the world to behave as if we did not know them....)

Isn't this list enough to make us uncomfortable? What are we going to do? Return to the order of the day, presumably.......

18th June 1975                          prof.dr.Edsger W.Dijkstra
Plataanstraat 5                         Burroughs Research Fellow
NUENEN - 4565
The Netherlands

PS. If the conjecture "You would rather that I had not disturbed you by sending you this." is correct, you may add it to the list of uncomfortable truths.


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Last modified: Mon Feb 26 12:48:11 2001