Subject: The Humble Programmer
From: "Edsger W. Dijkstra" <[email-masked]>
To: Alan Turing <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Aug 1972 12:00:00 -0500

As a result of a long sequence of coincidences I entered the programming 
profession officially on the first spring morning of 1952, and as far as 
I have been able to trace, I was the first Dutchman to do so in my 
country. In retrospect the most amazing thing is the slowness with which, 
at least in my part of the world, the programming profession emerged, a 
slowness which is now hard to believe. But I am grateful for two vivid 
recollections from that period that establish that slowness beyond any 
doubt.

After having programmed for some three years, I had a discussion with 
van Wijngaarden, who was then my boss at the Mathematical Centre in 
Amsterdam - a discussion for which I shall remain grateful to him 
as long as I live. The point was that I was supposed to study theoretical 
physics at the University of Leiden simultaneously, and as I found the 
two activities harder and harder to combine, I had to make up my 
mind, either to stop programming and become a real, respectable theoretical 
physicist, or to carry my study of physics to a formal completion only, 
with a minimum of effort, and to become..., yes what? A programmer? 
But was that a respectable profession? After all, what was programming?