About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.

— Edsger W. Dijkstra, How do we tell truths that might hurt? (1975)

Source: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD04xx/EWD498.html

From EWD 498, a 1975 note later published in ACM SIGPLAN Notices (1982).

Topics: programming