On Nov 6, 2007 6:03 PM, Devon McCormick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I find it interesting that he talked a lot about the practice of > programming but did not do it; this might help explain his blind spot > toward APL.
He did practise a lot. In his younger years, Dijkstra was one of the (two) creators of the very first compiler of Algol 60 (after being one of the designers of that language), and led the design and creation of the very influential ``T.H.E.'' operating system. Although his later work is not directly related with large-scale programming, it contains lots of small but far from trivial algorithms which he wrote mostly in a pseudocode notation of his own. It is Dijkstra who invented semaphores, the co-operating sequential processes, non-deterministic control sequencing (guarded commands), as well as some other programming constructs. He also introduced some very important principles well known and valued in today's world of programming. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
