Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective

DIHKSTRA, Edsger W.

ISBN 10: 0387906525 / ISBN 13: 9780387906522

Published by Springer, New York, 1982

About this Item

Texts and Monographs in Computer Science. xvii, 362 p. 24 cm. Ex library with labels on spines and rear pastedown, ink stamps on top edge and title page. Seller Inventory # 148207

Bibliographic Details

Title: Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal ...

Publisher: Springer, New York

Publication Date: 1982

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: ex library-good

About this title

Synopsis:

Since the summer of 1973, when I became a Burroughs Research Fellow, my life has been very different from what it had been before. The daily routine changed: instead of going to the University each day, where I used to spend most of my time in the company of others, I now went there only one day a week and was most of the time -that is, when not travelling!- alone in my study. In my solitude, mail and the written word in general became more and more important. The circumstance that my employer and I had the Atlantic Ocean between us was a further incentive to keep a fairly complete record of what I was doing. The public part of that output found its place in what became known as "the EWD series", which can be viewed as a form of scientific correspondence, possible since the advent of the copier. (That same copier makes it hard to estimate its actual distribution: I myself made about two dozen copies of my texts, but their recipients were welcome to act as further nodes of the distribution tree. ) The decision to publish a se1ection from the EWD series in book form was at first highly embarrassing, but as the months went by I got used to the idea. As soon as some guiding principles had been adopted -preferably not published elsewhere, as varied and as representative as possible, etc.