Editing Edsger W. Dijkstra (section)

== Essays and other writing ==
Throughout Dijkstra's career, his work was characterized by elegance and economy.<ref name="Apt, Krzysztof R. 2002"/> A prolific writer (especially as an essayist), Dijkstra authored more than 1,300 papers, many written by hand in his precise script. They were essays and parables; fairy tales and warnings; comprehensive explanation and pedagogical pretext. Most were about mathematics and computer science; others were trip reports that are more revealing about their author than about the people and places visited. It was his habit to copy each paper and circulate it to a small group of colleagues who would copy and forward the papers to another limited group of scientists.{{sfnp|Istrail|2008}}

=== EWDs ===
Dijkstra was well known for his habit of carefully composing manuscripts with his [[fountain pen]]. The manuscripts are called EWDs, since Dijkstra numbered them with ''EWD'', his initials, as a prefix. According to Dijkstra himself, the EWDs started when he moved from the Mathematical Centre in [[Amsterdam]] to the Eindhoven University of Technology (then Technische Hogeschool Eindhoven). After going to [[Eindhoven]], Dijkstra experienced a [[writer's block]] for more than a year. He distributed photocopies of a new EWD among his colleagues. Many recipients photocopied and forwarded their copies, so the EWDs spread throughout the international computer science community. The topics were computer science and mathematics, and included trip reports, letters, and speeches. These short articles span a period of 40 years. Almost all EWDs appearing after 1972 were hand-written. They are rarely longer than 15 pages and are consecutively numbered. The last one, No. 1318, is from 14 April 2002. Within computer science they are known as the EWD reports, or, simply the EWDs. More than 1300 EWDs have been scanned, with a growing number transcribed to facilitate search, and are available online at the Dijkstra archive of the University of Texas.<ref>{{cite web |website=E. W. Dijkstra Archive |publisher=University of Texas |url=http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ |title=The manuscripts of Edsger W. Dijkstra}}</ref>

=== Writing style ===
His interest with [[simplicity]] came at an early age and under his mother's guidance. He once said he had asked his mother whether trigonometry was a difficult topic. She replied that he must learn all the formulas and that further, if he required more than five lines to prove something, he was on the wrong track.<ref name="Denken_als_Discpline">{{cite web |last=Dijkstra |first=Edsger |title=Denken als Discipline |url=http://www.vpro.nl/speel.POMS_VPRO_212868.html |website=VPRO |date=10 April 2001 |publisher=Noorderlicht |access-date=21 June 2016}}</ref>

Dijkstra was famous for his wit, eloquence, rudeness, abruptness and often cruelty to fellow professionals, and way with words, such as in his remark, "The question of whether Machines Can Think (…) is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim."<ref>{{Cite EWD|898|The threats to computing science|quote=Alan M. Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether Machines Can Think, a question of which we now know that it is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim.}}, 1984</ref> His advice to a promising researcher, who asked how to select a topic for research, was the phrase: "Do only what only you can do".<ref name="Dijkstra_bio"/> Dijkstra was also known for his vocal criticism and absence of social skills when interacting with colleagues. As an outspoken and critical visionary, he strongly opposed the teaching of [[BASIC]].<ref name="EWD498">{{Cite EWD|498|How do we tell truths that might hurt?}}</ref>

=== Recurring themes ===
In many of his more witty essays, Dijkstra described a fictional company of which he served as chairman. The company was called Mathematics, Inc., a company that he imagined having [[commercialized]] the production of mathematical [[theorem]]s in the same way that software companies had commercialized the production of computer programs.  He invented a number of activities and challenges of Mathematics Inc. and documented them in several papers in the EWD series. The imaginary company had produced a proof of the [[Riemann Hypothesis]] but then had great difficulties collecting [[royalties]] from mathematicians who had proved results assuming the Riemann Hypothesis. The proof itself was a [[trade secret]].<ref name="Cite EWD|475">{{Cite EWD|475}}</ref> Many of the company's proofs were rushed out the door and then much of the company's effort had to be spent on [[Software maintenance|maintenance]].<ref>{{Cite EWD|539}}</ref> A more successful effort was the Standard Proof for [[Pythagoras' Theorem]], that replaced the more than 100 incompatible existing proofs.<ref>{{Cite EWD |427}}</ref> Dijkstra described Mathematics Inc. as "the most exciting and most miserable business ever conceived".<ref name="Cite EWD|475"/> EWD 443 (1974) describes his fictional company as having over 75% of the world's market share.<ref>{{Cite EWD|443}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Dijkstra |first=Edsger W |title=Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective |url=https://archive.org/details/selectedwritings0000dijk |url-access=registration |publisher=Springer-Verlag |location=Berlin |year=1982 |isbn=978-0-387-90652-2}}</ref>