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jiahao
backus-dijkstra-letters-1979
Creative & Media2016–2020
jiahao / backus-dijkstra-letters-1979

backus-dijkstra-letters-1979

Images and text transcripts of the correspondence between John Backus and Edsger Dijkstra, 1978-1979. Ref: https://medium.com/@acidflask/this-guys-arrogance-takes-your-breath-away-5b903624ca5f#.j6x6ppjc8 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11796557

Creative & Media
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
3Distinct people
3Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
110GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Images and text transcripts of the correspondence between John Backus and Edsger Dijkstra, 1978-1979. Ref: https://medium.com/@acidflask/this-guys-arrogance-takes-your-breath-away-5b903624ca5f#.j6x6ppjc8 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11796557

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year3 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2016-05-29 23:12:31 UTC to 2020-10-31 12:41:14 UTC.

012016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20162017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2020

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

3 sources
lioeters·Oct 31, 2020
> Dijkstra attacked the paper that inspired Haskell.. While Dijkstra's criticism probably does deserve to be called an "attack", the resulting exchange between him and Backus was highly thought-provoking and entertaining. https://github.com/jiahao/backus-dijkstra-letters-1979/ https://medium.com/@acidflask/this-guys-arrogance-takes-your... > He should be a footnote in history. Please read the posted article, and educate yourself on his historical significance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra#Pioneering_...
In Edsger Dijkstra – The Man Who Carried Computer Science on His Shoulders

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