Edsger Dijkstra: the world’s first tech blogger (Before the Internet existed)

Imagine a world-renowned computer scientist who publishes informal notes covering everything from theoretical algorithms to travel complaints to angry letters about programming language design. He writes with wit, uses everyday analogies, coins playful terminology, and distributes his thoughts in numbered manuscripts to anyone interested.

Sound like a modern tech blogger? This was Edsger Dijkstra in the 1960s. Decades before the internet, let alone blogging platforms, existed.

Who was Edsger Dijkstra?

Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1930-2002) was a Dutch computer scientist whose influence on programming is hard to overstate. He:

  • Created the shortest path algorithm (Dijkstra’s algorithm), foundational to GPS, routing, and network protocols, and, for the math nerd, really a super elegant approach
  • Invented semaphores, the synchronization primitives that enable concurrent programming
  • Championed structured programming, helping eliminate the chaos of “spaghetti code”
  • Won the 1972 Turing Award, computing’s highest honor

But beyond these technical achievements, Dijkstra was a remarkable communicator with a distinctive literary style, something rare in computer science then and now.

The EWD manuscripts: a blog before blogs

From 1959 until shortly before his death, Dijkstra wrote over 1,300 manuscripts labeled “EWD” (his initials: Edsger Willem Dijkstra) followed by a number. These weren’t formal academic papers submitted to journals. They were something else entirely. Something we’d now recognize instantly as blog posts.

What made EWDs blog-like?

Frequency and Informality: Unlike academic papers that took months or years to publish, Dijkstra wrote EWDs whenever inspiration struck. Some were polished drafts of papers; others were rough notes, travel observations, or rants dashed off in response to current events in computing.

Range of Topics: Just as a modern blogger might write about their technical expertise, their travels, and their opinions on industry trends, Dijkstra’s EWDs covered:

  • Deep theoretical computer science
  • Algorithm designs and proofs
  • Trip reports from conferences
  • Critiques of programming languages and practices
  • Philosophical reflections on education
  • Complaints about bureaucracy

Personal Voice: Academic writing demands objectivity and formality. Blog writing encourages personality. Dijkstra’s EWDs read like conversations with a witty friend who happens to be explaining complex algorithms.

Open Distribution: Dijkstra physically mailed photocopies of his EWDs to colleagues and interested parties worldwide. This was his subscription list, a pre-internet version of email newsletters or RSS feeds.

Handwritten Format: Most EWDs were handwritten (Dijkstra famously avoided using computers for writing), giving them an intimate, personal quality, like reading someone’s notebooks rather than their published works.

Dijkstra’s voice: precision with personality

What makes the EWDs exceptional isn’t just their content, it is how Dijkstra wrote. Consider this opening from EWD 28, launching into a theoretical discussion about machines and languages:

“A machine defines (by its very structure) a language, viz. its input language: conversely, the semantic definition of a language specifies a machine that understands it. In other words: machine and language are two faces of one and the same coin. I am going to describe such a coin. I leave it entirely to you to decide which of these two aspects of the subject matter of my talk you think the most important as it is rather ridiculous in both aspects.”

That final phrase – the “rather ridiculous in both aspects” – is pure Dijkstra. He’s about to present serious theoretical work, but he can’t resist acknowledging its absurdity. This is intellectual honesty with a wink.

Examples of Dijkstra’s humor and style

Hotel Analogies: In EWD 54, explaining complex I/O coordination, Dijkstra compares process management to running a hotel. Guests check in (processes request I/O), occupy rooms (memory allocation), and check out (operations complete). It’s technically precise and charmingly accessible.

Invented Terminology: Writing in Dutch, Dijkstra coined “tandepoetsprogramma” (toothbrushing program) for initialization routines that clean up state, because they prepare the system like brushing your teeth prepares you for sleep.

Casual Asides: Throughout technical discussions, you’ll find phrases like:

  • “Dat is toch wel al te gek” (That’s just too crazy)
  • “Het is natuurlijk erg prettig” (It’s naturally quite pleasant)

Cutting Criticism: Dijkstra could be merciless when critiquing bad practices. His famous quote (or at least, famously attributed to him): “The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.”

Why the EWDs still matter

Modern developers might wonder why anyone should read computer science papers from the 1960s-1990s. Several reasons:

1. The Writing Is Timeless: Dijkstra’s explanations remain clear and insightful regardless of technological changes. His discussion of elegance in programming (EWD 32) is as relevant today as in 1962.

2. Foundational Concepts: Many principles Dijkstra explored (concurrency, abstraction, correctness) are more important than ever as systems grow more complex.

3. Model for Technical Communication: Dijkstra proved that rigorous thinking and engaging writing aren’t opposites. Technical bloggers today are, consciously or not, following the path he blazed.

4. Historical Perspective: Understanding how pioneers grappled with fundamental problems helps us recognize when we’re encountering similar challenges in new contexts.

5. Pure Intellectual Pleasure: The EWDs are simply enjoyable to read. How many technical documents can claim that?

The Biography That Should Exist

Despite Dijkstra’s influence and fascinating life, there’s no comprehensive biography that captures both his technical genius and his literary personality. Most accounts focus on his algorithms and awards, missing the human complexity that made him remarkable.

A proper Dijkstra biography would explore:

  • His unconventional path (initially studying physics, his theoretical approach to a practical field)
  • His relationships with other computing pioneers
  • His fierce advocacy for rigor in programming
  • His teaching philosophy and influence on students
  • The development of his distinctive writing style
  • His role as a Dutch scientist in an American-dominated field
  • His prescient warnings about software complexity that proved prophetic

Someday, someone needs to write this book. Maybe I’ll end up kickstarting it myself.

Reading the EWDs today

The complete Dijkstra Archive is available online at the University of Texas, where his papers are preserved. You can read every EWD, often with both scanned handwritten originals and typed transcriptions.

Each is a glimpse into a brilliant mind that refused to sacrifice clarity or personality for technical precision, because Dijkstra understood that good thinking requires both.

For today’s technical writers

Dijkstra’s EWDs offer a challenge to modern technical bloggers, documentation writers, and computer science communicators: Can we match his combination of rigor and readability? Can we make complex ideas accessible without dumbing them down? Can we be both precise and personal?

The best technical writing today, whether it’s blog posts, documentation, or papers, channels something of Dijkstra’s spirit: deep knowledge presented with clarity, humor, and humanity.

In that sense, every thoughtful technical blogger is continuing Dijkstra’s project. We’re all writing EWDs now; we just call them blog posts and press “publish” instead of photocopying and mailing them.

But we should aspire to write them half as well as Dijkstra did, with his elegance, his wit, and his refusal to let rigor become rigid or science become sterile.

Further Reading:

Related Articles on This Blog:

EDW 37 – a review of the new IBM 1620

In EWD 37 Dijkstra records a product review of the the new IBM 1620 computer, which came to the market in 1959.
As often, the article starts with a wonderful Dijkstra-esk introduction.

It is a good custom that scientific articles are reviewed and that no publisher ever thinks about starting a lawsuit or any other measures of vengeance against the author of a very unfavourable review of one of his publications.

He continues,

With this in mind it is somewhat curious that it is not customary to review digital computers. Reviews of these scientific instruments are in some respects much more important: it is a pity if you have bought the wrong book, but it is much, much worse if you have bought the wrong computer.

Foto from http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PP1620.html

I am not sure if it is the first review of a new computer ever, but it is an interesting one, and it goes quite deep into the technical aspects.
(BTW for the historians amongst us, the 1620 was considered the first “mini-computer”.)

It is my considered opinion, however, that this machine embodies some very fundamental mistakes and certainly after the publication of the two letters mentioned above I regard it as my duty not to remain silent any longer. Manufacturers should be warned for these mistakes in order not to be tempted to incorporate them in their future designs, also machine users should be warned for these mistakes in order to help them in not chosing the wrong machine and in order to create a climate where machines will be judged more by their fundamental properties.

Dijkstra surfaces two major flaws in the design of this computer.
An instruction for constructing subroutines (Branch And Transmit) that is basically unusable because it is impossible to use in nested subroutines.

Another problem Dijkstra identifies is with the design of the paper tape processing. And it wouldn’t be Dijkstra if he would not illustrate this shortcoming with a great metaphor.

But now a curious problem arises: the terminal Record XXX Mark which has been stored is indistinguishable from previous Record Marks which might have been read from the tape, and therefore the machine is faced with a problem that shows a striking resemblance to the prototype of an improper algorithm: a man asking the way and getting the answer “You go straight on and turn to the right just before the last steel bridge.”

Dijkstra goes on to criticize the implementation of the variable field addressing method. He proves the implementation in not only very uneconomic (wasting memory – “cores”), but also severely limiting memory management. So severe that he questions the intelligence of the designers of the computer.

I always wonder whether the designers of such machines have been aware of the restrictive consequences of the technique in question; if so, it is hard to respect their conscious decision to stick to it, if not, are they the people that should have been designing machines? I always wonder……

Looking at these shortcomings they seem quite hilarious, but these were the early days of computing.

Dijkstra concludes his review with a final scathing verdict. Not only the buyers must have been totally ignorant to have bought such a machine, also the manufacturer is to blame.

As the reader will understand, my recent study of the IBM 1620 has been a shocking experience: I knew that it was a rather small machine but I had never suspected that it would embody so many basic blunders. Personally, I cannot undergo such an experience without asking myself what its morals are.
One of the facts we have to face is that this machine, despite of its poor qualities, has been bought or rented. Either the customer is incompetent to judge what he is buying, or the contracts are signed by the wrong persons; in both cases the conclusion is that the fact, that other people have chosen a particular machine, is no guarantee whatsoever as far as its quality is concerned.
…
The next fact that we have to face is that this machine, despite of its poor qualities, has been produced, in this case even by a big firm with a long and considerable experience. The straightforward conclusion is, that nor the size nor the experience is a guarantee as far as the quality of the product is concerned. Well, we can think of various explanations for this apparent inconsistency, but the most obvious explanation predicts still more blunders in the more ambitious and more complicated products of the manufacturer in question.

Thank you very much. There you go, IBM.

Erich Maria Remarque – Im Westen nichts Neues

(All Quiet on the Western Front)
Incredible story about a German soldier on the Western front in France during the First World War.
Young men are mangled and deformed by the atrocities they experience in the trenches.
People die like flies. Soldiers must leave their wounded mates in the no man’s land between the fronts. From the trenches their hear them cry for help.
That same atmosphere as Celine’s Voyage au bout the la nuit.
Still, Remarque keeps some form of distance to the story, while describing the horrors of the war and the trenches. He analyses without becoming personal. Numb, dull, demoralised.

Unavoidable? The First World War – John Keegan

I recently visited Belgium, the area of Ieper. The remains of the First World War there are impressive.
I got interested and purchased The First World War by John Keegan,  which was according to the mass on google the essential guide to the First World War. My notes of this reading.
The incredible back story to this War. Starting with the long envisioned Schieffenplan, which had been cooking in Germany long before the war started. All the parties seems to be preparing their armies for a war. At a certain point the war became unavoidable.
How easily the war could have been prevented by some basic diplomatic actions.
Both sides hold on to very basic offensive tactic of frontal offence. Leading to many death. Both sides undertook these initiatives, which hundred thousand deaths or more in a week. This happened at all frontiers.
Besides the most well-known frontier in the West, mainly in Belgium and Norther France, the War was fought Africa in the German colonies, in the Middle East (Turkey being the ally of Germany in this war, in the Caucasus, Greece, Serbia, and at sea.
Germany was very successful with their submarines.
The war led or coincided with the downfall of the three large power centres in Europe: the tzar in Russia, the Austro-Hungarian emperor and the last emperor of Germany.
After the war Europe was fragmented in many new nation states due to the downfall of Germany and Austria-Hungary. This instabilities caused by this outcomes are still felt.
Keegan ends with the remark that is difficult to understand why a prosperous continent risked their achievements and values in ended up in such a bloody conflict.

A war that should never have happened. Not only was it meaningless. It was preventable.

Read That Sh*t

Probably the greatest book title of 2016: Nobody Wants To Read Your Sh*t by Steven Pressfield. It’s a very practical book.

Pressfield describes how over the years he learned how to write. He goes through his lengthy career and shares what he has learned in all these jobs leading to success as a writer. He explains how he has learned from his job as a copywriter to cut down his messages to the core.

  1. Streamline your message. Focus it and pare it down to its simplest, clearest, easiest-to-understand form.
  2. Make its expression fun. Or sexy or interesting or scary or informative. Make it so compelling that a person would have to be crazy NOT to read it.
  3. Apply that to all forms of writing or art or commerce.

He goes with his main theme for this book, which is you have to seduce your readers to read your stuff because they are not sitting around, waiting for your genius.

Have you reckoned the two principles in these first few pages? 1) Nobody wants to read your shit. 2) If you want to write and be recognized, you have to do it yourself. From these twain, all else proceeds.

Pressfield finds having a concept in your writings of key importance. He is coming from a copywriting perspective, a product perspective. See your book as a product.

A concept takes a conventional claim and puts a spin on it. A concept establishes a frame of reference that is greater than the product itself. A concept sets the product in a context that makes the viewer behold the product with fresh eyes—and perceive it in a positive, compelling light. A concept frames (or, more frequently, re-frames) the issue entirely.

During his years as a copywriter and writer for movies and series, he has learned that being authentic, being yourself, is very important. You can only speak to the heart by being authentic. If it is not meant, people simply will not believe you.

I said to myself, “It’s okay to be the kind of person I am.” It’s okay to be anxious. It’s okay to be unable to sleep. It’s okay to lack self-esteem. It’s okay to be an introvert, to seek out the quiet corners at a cocktail party, to care about quality, and to have your mood be affected by your surroundings.

Stealing is ok. Stealing is almost mandatory. You learn from others. But it should not be copying. Stealing should be done well. Austin Kleon has dedicated his book Steal Like An Artist to it.

“Kid, it ain’t stealing if you put a spin on it.”

Besides the concept, you need a theme. Nobody want to read your shit if the theme is not clear. it is what is in it for the reader.

Ask not, “What is the solution?” Ask, “What is the problem?” The problem in fiction, from the thrashing writer’s point of view, is almost always, “What is this damn thing about?” In other words, what’s the theme? What’s the theme of our book, our play, our movie script? What’s the theme of our new restaurant, our start-up, our video game? When we don’t

Pressfield shares how to structure stories. Discusses practical advice like having a clear Inciting Incident – in a movie – and that is something to repeat in your writing. He learned in during one of the formal classes Pressfield took.

About an hour into Friday evening’s class, he introduced the concept of the Inciting Incident. What was revolutionary for me was not so much that specific idea (though indeed it changed everything about the way I worked) as the mind-blowing thought that this stuff could actually be taught. … The Inciting Incident is the event that makes the story start. It may come anywhere between Minute One and Minute Twenty-Five. But it must happen somewhere within Act One. … How can you tell when you’ve got a good Inciting Incident? When the movie’s climax is embedded within it.

He shares a useful complete set of non-technical skill he acquired over the years.

I had learned these storytelling skills. But other capacities that I had also acquired over the preceding twenty-seven years were even more important. These were the skills necessary to conduct oneself as a professional—the inner capacities for managing your emotions, your expectations (of yourself and of the world), and your time. 1) How to start a project. 2) How to keep going through the horrible middle. 3) How to finish. 4) How to handle rejection. 5) How to handle success. 6) How to receive editorial notes. 7) How to fail and keep going. 8) How to fail again and keep going. 9) How to self-motivate, self-validate, self-reinforce. 10) How to believe in yourself when no one else on the planet shares that belief.

The aspiring writer is challenged by Pressfield not to be constrained about the things to write about. It does not matter if you do not know about a subject or situation. Just let it go and it will bring unexpected results.

The conventional truism is “Write what you know.” But something mysterious and wonderful happens when we write what we don’t know. The Muse enters the arena. Stuff comes out of us from a very deep source.

All nice about his storytelling and structuring skills developed writing stories for television and plays. But the world of a novel is different.

A novel is too long to be organized efficiently like a screenplay. There aren’t enough 3X5 cards in the world. Too much shit happens. New characters appear. New ideas show up. The whole story can get hijacked by the apparition of Mr. Micawber or Hamlet’s ghost or Winnie the Pooh.

So you are on your own there. And in the end, Pressfield comes back to the eternal enemy, which he wrote about extensively in his book Do The Work: Resistance.

Remember, the enemy in an endurance enterprise is not time. The enemy is Resistance. Resistance will use time against you. It will try to overawe you with the magnitude of the task and the mass of days, weeks, and months necessary to complete it.

Required reading:

Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with A Thousand Faces, C.G. Jung’s Two Essays on Analytical Psychology and Symbols of Transformation, and, for the real Movieland nitty-gritty, Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey.


And Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder.

If you haven’t read Save the Cat! and Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies, get them right away. One of Blake’s principles is Keep It Primal. A great movie, he believes, should be so basic, so soul-grounded, that it could be understood by a caveman. In other words, without language. Without dialogue.