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On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computing Science
Dijkstra's 1988 provocation — students should not be allowed near a computer until they have demonstrated mastery of formal reasoning — articulated as a logical consequence of premises the field had been refusing to take seriously for thirty years.
"On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computing Science" (EWD1036) is the essay in which Dijkstra crystallized his pedagogical position into a single scandalous proposal: programming students should be prohibited from touching a computer until they had demonstrated competence in formal reasoning. The proposal was received as provocation and was indeed provocative, but it was also a direct consequence of premises Dijkstra had been defending for decades. If programming is a mathematical discipline, then its prerequisites are mathematical, not technological. Giving a student a computer before she can reason formally is like giving a medical student a scalpel before she can identify the organs — the tool amplifies whatever skill or lack of skill the user brings to it, and only the user's understanding makes the difference between help and harm.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The essay was composed in