John Mahoney writes: “Noted computer scientist Edsger Wybe Dijkstra died on August 6, 2002.” Here’s a link to what looks like a university obituary on Dijkstra and here’s part of what CNET’s News.com had to say about him: “Dijkstra was on the committee that created Algol, the first block-structured programming language and one that introduced many ideas behind Pascal, Basic and C. His practical skills, especially in discerning and coding algorithms, were also remarkable–he wrote the first Algol 60 compiler. Other ideas he invented or helped define include structured programming, stacks, vectors, semaphores, synchronized processes and the notorious deadly embrace–feared by multitasking programmers the world over–where two processes both stop while they wait for each other to continue.”
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