Benefit and belief

[Ben Finney]

rusi <rustompmody at gmail.com> writes:

> The American programmer would profit more from learning Latin than
> from learning yet another programming language.
>
> Edsger Dijkstra in "On the fact that the Atlantic Ocean has two
> sides"
>
> http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD611.html

It's ambiguous whether Dijkstra is saying anything positive about Latin
 there.

He could be saying “learning Latin would be a useful thing for average
US programmers”.

Or he could be saying “learning any second natural human language – even
one as useless as Latin – will benefit the average US programmer more
than learning another programming language”.

I prefer to think someone as wise as Dijkstra would not be deluded as to
the value of Latin, and lean more toward the latter meaning.

-- 
 \       “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not |
  `\            entitled to their own facts.” —US Senator Pat Moynihan |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney